formblu - Intersections

Intersections I

I once saw a house on TV where the architect had incorporated a giant boulder into the interior space. The glass wall had been meticulously cut around the rock so that part of it was contained in the living space, while the rest remained outside — a natural element in the volcanic landscape of Tenerife. (At least, that’s what I remember).

That image stayed with me. The intertwining of Glass and Rock. I searched for the house but couldn’t find it again.

I was inspired to explore the concept, albeit on a much smaller scale. This coincided with my experiments in generative AI and so I started creating sketches using different diffusion models to create rough sketches. The task seemed simple enough: generate a sketch of a rock intertwined with a glass cube. Simple.

However, I quickly discovered that no matter what prompts I used, I couldn’t recreate the image I had in my head. I tried both Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and Runway but none of them delivered the results I wanted. I did generate lots of cool images in the process that led to several different rabbit holes (see below).

Long story short: I decided to build a series of rock/glass sculptures. This led to other issues however. Rocks turned out to be expensive to source (and granite in particular). And, to state the obvious, are super heavy! How big could I go and still manage to lift it on my own. Plus, glass has it’s own challenges. In the end, I created a series of prototypes using S-M sized rocks and acrylic. These are still just experiments. I hope, one day, to explore this concept on a larger scale.

Prototype I

These photos were taken in natural light, which animated the materials. The light added depth to the sculptures and brought them to life.

Big Medium Summer Exhibition (Austin, 2024)

'Nature, if you made it expressive by reducing it to its abstract forms, could transmit the most profound thoughts by its simple presence.' Michel Baridon

The prototypes were exhibited as part of the Big Medium Summer Exhibition.