a couple months ago deb and i began a new public art commission. its is a commemorative public art memorial for past forced adoption. we were working with relationships australia in consultation with a local community group who have been affected by forced adoption practises. needless to say it was a very serious, and troubling topic. we met many lovely people during the process and heard many sad and incredible personal stories along the way.
for such a serious subject we approached the design of the memorial to be one with some substance and weight to it, literally.
we began making trip 2 hours north to a local quarry to find the right bit of black granite for the job.
this was way back at the beginning of the year, and we would be driving up to the dry quarry in the heat of the day, and walking around looking for the perfect stone.
we made quite a few trips, looking for the right one.
this one was on hold for us for a bit, but it wasnt quite right
we got to know the guys working at the quarry and they got to know what we were looking for in a rock.
one day we got he call to come up to the quarry, they thought they found the rock we were looking for. this is deb checking out the rock while it was still in the pit, looking at the natural break in the stone. exactly what we were after.
here is the beautiful stone after it was brought up from the quarry, with a lovely natural front face. the concept for the artwork was simple, to take a solid bit of rack and crack it into 2 pieces, force-ably separating the 2 bits that had been together for thousands of years.
to separate the stone we needed to control the break, so it broke as we wanted it to. to do this we had the quarry drill a line of vertical holes along the point we wanted it to break.
then some metal wedge shaped things plugs called feathers were put into the holes and gently tapped into the rock. as the wedge went further into the rock the pressure causes it to crack.
it happens slowly and you can hear the rock cracking as it goes.
the rock now in 2 pieces.
from here we had some more work to do on the rock. we ended up working a couple sides of the rock. 2 sides we kept looking natural and just exfoliated the surface a bit more using heat.
the third side we wanted to polish so we had it wire cut and the began polishing it by hand .
you can see in this photo the rock in 2 pieces at the stone memorial place where we hired some space for this project.
then deb and myself spent over a week in front of this rock grinding the surface. the whole surface is marked up in yellow and then you grind it off (so yo know what areas you have done)
we kept grinding and grinding.
these are the diamond pads we used going from 50 grit up to 3000 grit.
this is the 300 finish. we were so proud of ourselves for getting to this point.
then one of the stone workers came and did the next step which was polishing using a compressed pad of camel hair and a polishing agent.
this really made the surface shine and is what the industry calls "sealing the rock"
it was a nice last step on the side face
now you could see your reflection in the rock! so much better than we imagined.
deb and myself at the end of the polishing, happy as
the last thing to do was engrave a sentence that explains the memorial onto the polished surface. now it is ready for install.
installation phase next time
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