here are some of the beginnings of the installation: when stars become words, as well as some of the overall process. the work began with a 5 inch hand made “vowel ruler” – which i then used to create shapes. i tried to make a shape for every star name, but of course, some had only one or two vowels, and hence, i could not make a form with 1 or 2 lines… so for some of the shapes i combined the vowels of two different names. once i laid out the shapes, i cut them out of paper, and then used the templates to generate the same parts in thin cardboard. i then put the forms together intuitively, sort of like figuring out a complex jigsaw puzzle, as edges and angles needed to meet.
i then gave the model to architect rafael silva, who did all of the measuring and, even worse, had to figure out how to get this wonky object into a cad program. (and when i say “wonky” i mean it, as one of the maintenance folks accidentally tossed the prototype into the trash – never to be seen again!).
once the object was in the cad program, the architect was able to generate drawings, and then the sculpture was realized by a group of carpenters who mainly build stage sets – which became an asset as the final construction involved a lot of improvisation.
you can see images of the final installation here.