Paraboloid #2

Yesterday I shared my first attempt at a wooden paraboloid structure, and today I'm sharing another in this mini-series (of two).  The idea behind this one was the same, nested parabolas, with a couple of changes.  The first was the shape of the parabolas themselves,  these were much taller and narrower than the last set, giving a slightly different shape overall.  The second difference is that instead of using thread to attach/suspend the different pieces, I used some spools of faux suede that were in the magic Georgia boxes.  This resulted in the connecting strings having much more visual impact that in the previous one.  I was able to apply some things I'd learned from the previous version to make this one slightly easier to assemble, but it is still really hard to connect the strings so that the spacing is even and all the strings are taut.

Paraboloid #2, c. Shannon Conley, 2020

From some angles I think this one looks like an alien skeleton head or something which makes me happy!

Paraboloid #1

I've been using the laser cutter lately for a lot of quilts, and after cutting the wooden Christmas ornaments I thought there might be a way to do some small geometric sculptures.  Of course having never worked in this media I had no idea how it would go, but I drafter this series of nested parabolas with the idea that I could generate something with graceful 3D curves.  Well, that turned out to be quite a bit harder than expected.  I sewed the pieces all together there through those holes about halfway down on the left and right and I thought I could just prop it up from there, but of course it kept collapsing.  In the picture below it's being held up by being pinned to my work table.

I started stitching through various holes to try to get the shape to hold, here are a couple of pictures in progress.  It was very hard to get the individual paraboloids to be spaced evenly.  Even the final thing isn't perfect.  And then to make matters worse, I actually broke two of them halfway through the stitching.  I'm so thankful I was able to glue/clamp the broken pieces back together.

Here's a finished view

Paraboloid #1, c. Shannon Conley, 2020

The string is different colors of sparkly Ricky Tims razzle dazzle thread.  I bought a bunch of spools of it a few years ago, but then didn't wind up doing much bobbin quilting, so I thought this would be a fun place to use it.

I had fun with this experiment (sort of) and like the end shapes that were created.  I have two more wood "sculptures" to share, but I can tell you I don't think I'm going to be changing my primary medium any time soon!