I began with making a mold for the piece out of plywood and 1x6’s.

here you can see me put the last piece of the mold in place

After assembling the mold I sealed the seams of it with silicone as you can see in this video

after the silicone cured for 4 hours it was time to pour the first layer of resin into the mold. I actually ended up using the bathroom in my apartment as the place where I poured resin. I did this for a couple reasons; 1st. the bathroom is relatively cooler than the rest of the house. 2nd, It was away from everything and ventilated so I didn’t have to worry about the resin fumes stinking up my room and 3rd, it was not in the way of anything since I only needed the resin to cure overnight before painting on it again. In this next video you can see me pour the first layer of resin into the mold. Each layer was 3/4 a gallon.

After waiting 8 hours for the resin to cure I was able to start painting on the 1st layer of resin. My inspiration for the painting deviated a lot from what I initially thought I would paint. I ended up going with a theme of interconnectedness of life through creation and the multitudes of existence. I began the painting by putting down a layer of tall grass

Then I put blue water behind it, a beach around the grass, and also clouds. I put everything in the same plane as a way to mess with perspective, Seeing a macro and microscopic level of everything at the same time as well as messing with the orientation as the ocean turns into the sky with the clouds.

as I added more layers, I got more and more detailed with the grass making it look very lush and atmospheric. You can see here what I mean by messing with perspective though. The grass is as big as it would be in real life, but the mediterranean style beach is seen from a birds eye view quite literally as you can see the birds on the beach surrounding the beached whale at the bottom.

In this layer I explored the darker sides of life with venus fly traps turning into snakes and teethed beings representing the division and chaos in the world.

I painted this butterfly connected to another butterfly by a knot in their wings to represent the connection shared by all living organisms.

This painting explores the really beautiful connections in this world, but it also recognizes the necessity for things such as division chaos and even killing. In this part of the painting, the flower and butterfly above, melt into each other to depict an uprooted tree, showing connection. Then, on that tree is a panther holding a deer as prey by the neck. Bloody and gruesome, but also a necessary part of the cycle of life. It’s not a good or bad thing, it is just the reality of existence for that animal.

The Painting totaled roughly 15, 1/8” thick layers of resin. Then on top of that part I poured another 1.5” thick layer of resin that would end up being the sculpted part of the piece. You can see below how the piece came out of the mold at the end. All in all it took 16 gallons of resin. (excuse the dirty warehouse)

For the sculpting part of this project to take place I had to get a 3d model of my idea designed on a computer software. I am not very knowledgeable on this and honestly didn’t have the time to learn because I was too busy painting the piece, so I hired a freelancer on from Serbia and got him to make the model. His name was Goran, and he helped me change up the design a bit too because originally the entire piece was going to be covered in the geometric pyramids, but Goran said I should let some of the painting not be covered by the pyramids and that ended up being a great idea. So we went with this design 1st.

As I painted more and more of the piece, I really thought I was putting too much effort into the detail of the painting to have it covered in so many pyramids, so Goran and I reworked the design one more time. I settled on having large pyramids at the top of the piece that get smaller as they go further down the piece.

The CNCing process was probably the most stressful part of this whole project.

It took me about 3 weeks to finish the painting part of this project, which left me with 1 week to CNC and sand & polish the piece before the exhibition at the gallery. So the Friday before the exhibition I show up to the CNC shop that I had hired for the job 2 week prior. They had quoted me a good price and said they had everything I would need for the project, yada yada.. when I got there they hadn’t even opened up the file that I sent them over a week ago and then realized they didn’t know how to operate this file type because it was a lot more complicated than a simple profile milling job.

I ended up having to take it back to the shop that I just moved in and having the shop manager assist me in using our much less fancy CNC machine for the project. Luckily the shop manager understood the file type and all of that and we were able to get it done, but it took a lot longer than it should have because our machine is much slower than other, more industrial CNC machines. Here is a timelapse of the process below

All in all it took about 25 hours of watching the CNC machine go back and forth about 96,000 times. This is what it looked like when the process was over. Had a lot of sanding to do after that to get all the thin lines out

I was relieved to have gotten the CNCing done before the exhibition, but it got done on Wednesday the 9th at 6pm and the show was Friday at 5pm. So me, my roommate, my friend Christopher, and my buddy David from high school who actually drove down from Charlotte to come and help me all stayed up till 3am that night sanding and grinding away at the piece to finish it before the show.

At 3 am that night I poured the resin on top to reveal the final piece and let it cure for the rest of the night before being installed in the gallery on Friday the 11th.

The show ended up being really great. There were over 300 people that showed up to see mine and a few others’ artwork. I ended up selling a small piece to a big art collector here in Charleston. It was really incredible seeing people taking pictures of my artwork and it was really just astounding to see people appreciate my art in that way.

me with the piece

Here is a video of the piece in the gallery

This is a video of the piece outside the gallery under sunlight. I think it really brings out the best color in the piece.