After helping Los Angeles artist, Cara Levine, design her new studio in Highland Park, she asked me to consult, design and fabricate a large artwork for her upcoming retrospective at The Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Carve: the mystic is nourished from this sphere is a participatory sculpture that invites viewers to share grief, loss and personal experiences as part of a collective healing process. The focus of the wooden sculpture is a massive section of a sphere set flush into the museum wall, containing carved replicas of notes left by exhibition visitors. Coordinating with museum staff and working with two friends, (James Obed and Ivan Carija) I devised an efficient method for producing essentially a 12 foot diameter solid wood bowl.

Inspired by boat building techniques and skate park construction, I designed a sub-structure/form/installation frame which was cut with a CNC router. The large frame assembled via a number of custom clever joints, using a rubber mallet, a small amount of hardware, and only a half day of labor.

Once the frame was assembled, we built a false wall in my studio and mounted it vertically. A millwork company used special machinery to efficiently cut large boards into 1/4 inch by 2 inch strips. Using a laser-level, bandsaw and handplane, we skillfully shaped and fit the strips, temporarily nailing them to the formwork one piece at a time. Strip by strip we honed our technique, our movements and teamwork coelescing into an efficient dance. With the first layer complete, we rotated the form and started the second layer.

The process, although tedious at first in its requirement for precision, was incredibly enjoyable. Cara, being a skilled woodworker, was able to join us for a day of work constructing one of the layers. Since she would be carving into the finished shape during the duration of the exhibition, we removed all the metal staples used to hold the strips to the form. It took careful planning and logic to find a way to attach each subsequent layer without leaving metal anywhere within. Borrowing from the boat building world, we used low VOC epoxy to attach the layers to each other, using a total of 3 layers and 230 strips.