Natalie Ferry
Soccer on the Beach
Class of: 2024
Major: Product Design BFA
Medium: Wire sculpture with adjustable wood base
Faculty: Robert Hickman
Prompt: For this assignment, we were asked to create a piece either 3D or 2D out of wire. We could take the project in any direction as long as we created something the represented our culture in some way.
My family is an incredibly important part of my culture and has a significant impact on my life. The piece that I have made is a wire representation of a photo taken of my family at the beach. Growing up, each summer we would drive down to the Jersey shore and visit my grandparents. It’s one of my favorite childhood memories.
After choosing the image, I did some basic line drawings over-top to help analyze which parts of the photo I felt were important. These lines were
continuous since the medium I was working with was wire and it is easier to use in a single strand. I decided that I would break the image up into parts and layer them, so that from head on the picture is coherent, but from the other angles, it reads very differently. I felt like this would add a new level of intrigue to the piece. Once I chose the lines I wanted to work with I made new line drawings of each figure. Then using tracing paper, I layered them on top of each other to make sure that they would fit together.
For each wire piece made I used 24 gauge steel galvanized wire as the body and 16 gauge as the standing support. To bend the figures, I used my hands and pliers. The base/stand is made out of two pieces of MDF. One that holds a vertical bar with a clamp mounted to it. And one that the clamp attaches to that contains the wire pieces. The clamp mechanism is designed to make the height of the piece adjustable. When the viewer looks at the piece from eye level the figures lineup and the picture is revealed.