Group Members: Laramie Torres, Reagan Stevens, Beth Davis

When assigned the project on Tuesday, we decided to walk around to look for a place we could install our project in. After some time, we found a perfect place we all liked in Equity Hall’s stairwell. From there, we needed to think of ideas on what we could put there, so we agreed to bring back ideas and concept sketches we thought we could do for our projects next class on Thursday.

By Thursday, we came together to show off sketches and share ideas of what we could do. Laramie had ideas for using Q-Tips to make them into interesting snowflake designs that could hang. Beth had an idea for a cage with a figure hanging inside it. Since both Laramie’s and Beth’s ideas included hanging elements, we combined both to have this icy-cold theme with the cage, figure, and snowflakes hanging together.

We started off making the cage out of heavy-duty wire, and we let Beth lead this part since it was her idea for the cage. The three of us made a large wire base and a lot of time was spent cutting and twisting pieces together. We only got a cage base going by the end of class.

The following week on Tuesday, we continued working on building the cage by adding more bars with thin wire pieces. Then, at the top of the cage, we tied all the wire bars together to create a centerpiece and loop of the cage where it will hang from. After that, we all decided to integrate a hula hoop at the base to make it more round and sturdy, and we used thinner wire to secure it together. Towards the end of class, Laramie agreed to start making some of the Q-Tip snowflakes and we all agreed to have the whole project done by the end of class on Thursday.

On Thursday, Laramie brought two snowflake designs along with the pack of Q-Tips, tape, and super glue to work on making more snowflakes during class. Laramie helped to add a smaller base towards the top with a silicone tube to help the cage to remain round and sturdy. Afterward, Reagan agreed to help Laramie with making the snowflakes and Beth agreed to get started on the figure. We initially planned to have a full-body figure inside, but due to time, we decided to not include legs. The pose of the figure was inspired by images from google, and we thought it would be a good idea to have the figure reaching up and holding itself up from the top of the cage. By the end of class, the project was pretty much finished and all that was missing was to give the figure more volume and install it in the Equity Hall stairwell. We coordinated and agreed to set it up the next day on Friday around 1:30 pm.

On Friday, Beth came in earlier to do some final touches before installation. Beth took a ball of blue yarn she had laying around to go with the icy theme and wrapped it around the wire figure several times to give it more volume/further develop the body. She also used some silver ribbon and let it hang off the bottom of the figure to give it more expression. In certain spots like the arms, it was difficult to get the yarn to lay the right way, but in the end, it came together and we were satisfied with the result. Once everything was good to go, we all headed to the Equity Hall Building as planned but unfortunately we ran into a problem with the ladder. It was too small for Beth to hang up our project, so she had to return to the Fine Arts Building to get a taller one. After hanging up the cage and tying on the snowflakes, the project and installation were finally completed. 

This project was a lot of trial, error, and discovery; we ran into problems with the extremely thick wire frame we made, finding the best way to hang it, and there was a lot of experimentation with what materials would work best to achieve our goal. In the end, we worked well as a team to problem-solve and create an experimental piece that we were happy to show.  

Yay, finished installation!