Coming about commission

Coming About is the Stabile that I entered in the City of Marina’s anniversary contest back in 2015. While it was among three works selected, it was shelved for lack of funding.

The contest was for a work marking the entrance to the city.

I envisioned Coming About being installed in the center of one of Marina’s roundabouts. The Stabile would have been between 35 to 40 feet high.

My long time clients from Palo Alto, CA wanted a sailing themed Stabile for their front garden. After looking at my various Stabile models, they chose Coming About to be scaled to 7 feet.

Here are a few photos of the process, from model to installation (which will be in future posts).

I Photoshopped a photo of the original Coming About model onto a photo of their desired location. The clients thought it worked well. They then wanted to have further discussions about colors. Also, it was decided that there would need to be a base plate.

The original model did not have the gussets necessary to triangulate the trusses. Modifying the original would have marred the finish extensively, so I decided that I would create a new model with the gussets. It is a little larger than the original which gave me a bit more room to fit the gussets without having to work at miniature scale.

It was essential to keep all parts firmly in place.

Here, the first trusses are epoxied into place.

Using epoxy to join the parts requires time and patience. I found out a long time ago that one must not fidget parts being assembled with epoxy!

Two “Coming About” models! One can see the gussets on the new model.

Next post will be about the welding of the waterjet cut parts…