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How to Build Stone

By MPL Staff on Mar 31, 2015 4:53 PM

You've admired the Serpent and made good use of the Rack. Now come the Pebble-forms! How do you create a functional sculpture that will withstand weather and weight, and still wow? Check out the beginnings of local artist Ray Chi's multi-step process to transform raw material into non-traditional furniture by sculpting, coloring, and strengthening the base materials. 

The pebbles will be made of cast fiberglass-reinforced concrete shells with a high density foam core. To create them, Ray will sculpt full-scale forms out of the foam, then create a flexible mold from these forms by using a brush-on silicone material. The foam core will be suspended via an embedded, threaded rod in the upside-down molds, and the mold filled by a fiberglass-concrete mixture. That special mixture is what will give the sculptures their strength and allow them to remain outdoors, maintenance-free, year round. Color is added to the mixture before pouring. After curing for at least 5 days, the sculptures can be removed from their molds and installed on site! 

How Pebble-forms are made: start with the core and create a mold!

Ray Chi based the design on actual stones he collected from local beaches. Their organic forms can be interpreted both as abstract sculpture and functional design. The curved forms contrast the rectilinear lines of the library architecture, and the scattered (yet fixed) arrangement encourages multiple types of interaction, mirroring the new East Branch's focus on flexible-use space. Keep your eyes open for this stunning addition to the library, and check out the sketches below to see where you can expect to find them come summertime! 

Play, sit, read, chat -- what will you use Pebble-forms for?

 



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