another grant

My professor Jarod and I recently found out that we will be getting some more funding for our collaborative project that we began last May under a Summer Undergraduate Research with Faculty (SURF) grant from our school. We applied for another institutional grant this past semester, and though we only were granted half of the funds requested ($5000) we will do what we can with the money provided! So... the bubble project continues...

CLICK HERE to read more about the collaboration on my other blog

In short... the bubble project began with a desire to do "something cool" last summer. Jarod and I decided to apply for a SURF grant and it all went from there. Our proposal was based on the premise of a collaborative sculpture project. We decided that the common thread in our work, the basis upon which to collaborate, was our shared interest in and use of the grid. We underwent an investigation of Minimalism, reading publications on the subject, and even visiting Marfa, TX, the "hub of American minimalism."

Jarod and some Judd at the Chinati Foundation, in Marfa

From there we conceptualized the bubble project, a plan for a large-scale, repetitive, lightweight, modular installation that can be adjusted on a variety of sites. We worked together on Google SketchUp to design the bubble module, we worked together in the studio to build the MDF bubble "tool" and then we worked with plastic fabricators to produce the prototype, using a vacuum thermo-forming technique. And that's where our SURF funding ended.

Now, with the MAYS grant funds, we can work to make an aluminum "tool" which will be much stronger and will allow us to have an infinite amount of bubble tiles formed for us as needed. We will use the funds granted to have as many tiles made as possible. At $40 a tile, the $2500 won't go as far as we would like, but it sure is better than nothing! Eventually we hope to do installations using hundreds of the bubble tiles.