Below is an example of a successful student project for the LBC Northern Lights Festival 2023, including prototyping, construction and installation. The sculpture was designed by Annabelle Robles, and constructed by her and a team of other sculpture students.

Finished Installation

Sculpure installation, designed by Annabelle Robles and constructed by her team. The sculpture was painted with day-glow paint and lit by an LED black light.

Maquettes in two sizes Annabelle Robles standing pose for maquette

Maquettes, and a full body photo. The photo of Annabelle was for visually scaling the maquette, as shown below.

Each student in the sculpture class was tasked with creating simple paper maquettes of their sculpture ideas related to the Northern Lights LBC project for Fall 2023. The concept was to use planar materials (plywood) to construct a large scale sculpture that would then be painted with photo-luminescent paint, day-glow paint, or lit with LED strips. The maquettes were to be sized to 1" to the foot. This means that 1 inch of length in the maquette would equal 12 inches in the real world scale of the sculpture. Annabelle made two maquettes to try out different sizes. The larger one was chosen and is shown below.

Maquette and artist, properly scaled.

It became apparent that the sculpture should be scaled to maximize the use of commonly available 4'x8' plywood sheets. This bigger size allowed the sculpture to be built as large as possible while keeping the plywood seams to the edges only. When planning work that needs to compete with the landscape, it typically needs to be larger than life. This is known as "monumental" scale. As mentioned earlier, the maquette was constructed at 1: 12 scale. This meant that the largest single surface in this maquette was composed of a sheet that was 4in x 8in. This full sized sheet surface made up the center plane that traverses both major volumes. The printed miniature of Annabelle was likewise scaled to fit. It is a simple task to convert your foot-height to inches. In my case (instructor, Michael McGinnis), I am 5'-6" tall, so my printed figure would be 5-1/2" high at 1:12 scale.

construction image 1 construction image 2

construction image 3 construction image 4

construction image 5 construction image 6

construction image 7 construction image 9

The team worked long hours to construct the sculpture from plywood sheets and 2x4 lumber.

Over the course of several class periods and long evenings, the team of students worked on building the sculpture's structure. The materials used were CDX 3/4"x4'x8' plywood for the core surface, 3/8" CDX for the other major planes, 2x4 DF (Douglas fir) lumber for internal structuring, and construction screws for affixing the sheets to the DF lumber. The term "CDX", means the plywood surfaces were composed of two different grades on the front and back. Plywood is typically graded A through D. "A" being the best with no knots, and "D" being the worst with missing sections where knots may have been originally present but were broken out. The "X" means exterior grade, where waterproof glue has been used to laminate the layers. Because the work was for temporary display, no extra gluing of edges, or gap sealants were used.

Tools needed for the job included a table saw, a battery operated circular track saw (a circular saw that is guided by a channel on a specialized rail that allows for long, straight cuts), a battery operated drill and driver, and various clamps, hammers, tape measures and the like. For the most part, no one on the team had much experience with these tools before working on this project.

Installation image 1 Installation image 2

Installation image 3 Installation image 4

After delivery and site selection, the work was painted and lighted.

As seen in the first photo, above, the final scale of the project looked very close to the maquette's scale to Annabelle's photo. It was delivered by pickup truck late in the evening, and a primer coat of paint was applied right away. The primer served three purposes: first, to protect the plywood from moisture; second, to allow the finish paint to go on smoothly while covering better; and third, so that the translucent day-glow paint would appear brighter. The white primer under translucent paint allows light that passes through the paint to reflect back out to the viewer. Without the primer layer, the paint would appear very dull. This same concept is why white paper is needed in inkjet printers, because the inks used are transparent.

It began to rain during the painting process, which made it very difficult to complete. We had to tarp it so that the paint would not wash away. The next evening, we applied another coat to intensify the effect.

A single LED black light (ultraviolet) fixture was used to illuminate the sculpture. Day-glow paint fluoresces under UV light, and appears intense because the rest of the surroundings did not fluoresce.