A few posts back we talked about commissioning former artist in residence Mayme Kratz to cast the wonderful nest she made for us while here into a floor mounted sculpture to serve as a corner stone of sorts of the house in our entry tree grate. It turned into quite a project but we are finally finished and it looks spectacular!
We are MOST grateful to Mayme for NOT sending pictures of the work in progress as we would have completely freaked out. Apparently resin casting involves lots of cracks and annealing.
It can be nothing less than magic that Mayme was able to make this whole again and then sand it to its current beauty.
Then let the installation begin! We wanted to back light it and we wanted to control the light from the adjacent closet so I set up to chase the wires through the base of the tree grate platform to the basement below.
I chased the closet wall and installed a magnetic low voltage dimmer (The light we ended up using was a 12V fixture and we had to dim its transformer.)
I went through a bunch of unsuccessful trials with Christmas tree lights, LED rope lights, fluorescent light tables, etc. Either they were too much of a point source or generated too much heat. I did a bunch of research on side lit LED signage products and discovered a company called Lightbeam in Eugene Oregon that was amazingly helpful. They made a 3/8" thick custom LED light panel that has very even illumination and generates almost no heat. It was even reasonably priced! We could have gotten a round one made but it was expensive and we ended up just using gaffer tape to make our circle as the fixture would not be seen.
The panel came with a low voltage transformer which I wired up to the dimmer and placed in the tree grate cavity.
Initial tests showed that we had unbelievably smooth dimming and adequate brightness in full daylight.
The next issue was how we were going to support the sculpture to sustain the weight of an adult human being while not crushing the light panel below. Architect Ellen designed a 1/4" steel "table" that the light panel would slide under and had a hole in it 3/8" smaller than the sculpture.
The incomparable Neal at Vega Metals in downtown Durham fabricated the stand to incredibly tight tolerances and it worked like a dream. He needed our dinky project like he needed a hole in the head but he was gracious to a fault.
We used clear picture framing bumpers, affectionately called rubber baby buggy bumpers around here, underneath the sculpture to raise it to the proper level and give it a little cushion and also under the light panel to give it a little ventilation room. The final fit and finish is beyond all expectations. The light works perfectly and the nest has finally found its place. Thank you Mayme and thank you for everyone who helped make this project happen.
WELCOME TO CASSILHAUS!
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