Sonya Blesofsky Out of the MAD Studio

June 19th, 2009 at 08:22am sonya

While not in the MAD studios this week, I traveled to Miami FL to create a commissioned work at an office building.  People often ask what my process is, and it tends to vary with each piece I make, although most of the steps are pretty similar.

Since I had never been to the office in Miami where I would create the work, I wasn’t 100% what I would be making when I got there.  Before I got there we had discussed creating paper “security bars” for the windows, or making paper “concertina razor wire” across the space.  When I arrived, after a brief consultation, we decided that the windows over the front office were the best place for a piece, and I promptly got to work on creating window bars.

I can pretty much work anywhere, as long as I have: paper, my glue gun, 2 pairs of scissors, my guillotine paper-cutter, wooden dowels for creating straight paper parts, a pencil, and an x-acto knife.  I set up two stations in the office –one in a small cubicle and, as you can see, I also worked in the conference room.  (Very official!)

While I started to make the “wrought-iron rods” from paper, I also took a break to google images of security bars over windows and doors to get a better idea of how they look and the different ways they’re secured to walls and themselves.

The second day of installation, I took a quick tracing of the front gate of the home of my lovely hosts, and used the tracing of their gate details as a point of departure for the piece I would create at the office.  Once at the office I cut out the detail shapes, and glued sides onto them to create 3-dimensional forms.  Then I began assembling the parts.  I often find myself working on the floor, and tend to bring kneepads with me for big installations.

After the parts were assembled, I created a rigging system by attaching small rods to the backside of the assembled piece that would enable the piece to hang on and protrude from the wall.  These rods would fit over smaller rods already attached to the wall to hold the piece up.

I often tell people I never measure.  This is in-part true, as I almost never measure distances of the structures I mimmick, but sometimes I do have to measure to make sure a piece is hung level.  To get the rods to meet up, I have to measure distances one the wall, the window and the piece.  Then I double-check before I glue anything to the wall to make sure everything matches up.  Often, things don’t, as I’ve measured somehow wrong.  This is why I stay away from measuring and go mostly by feel or how things look.

For this piece I glued one top corner and temporarily taped the other so the piece wouldn’t fall down.  Then I slide the rest of the rods over the smaller and glued each corner one at a time.  For the larger window, I created the work in three pieces.

This piece in-all took me almost 30 hours to make, packed into three days.  Pfew!

Entry Filed under: in the studio