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Dog sculpture (Porta the Portuguese Water Dog)

Rusted steel, 29 by 8 by height 19 in or 73 by 20 by height 48 cm.

The dog is not shaped in the third dimension, but there's some depth since the dog is made
from a 1 inch or 2.6 cm thick steel plate. This flatness is carried over in the dog's ball,
which is a disc not a sphere (in a little visual joke).

Then the real dog Porta checks out the new piece.

(photographs by ET and Andrei Severny)










-- Edward Tufte, October 29, 2008


Response to Dog sculpture

Here's a wood enlargement of the small steel Porta piece. We're testing how the piece
scales up and the also the virtues of the base plate. The first image shows the
real dog Porta sitting on the base of the wood enlargement.

We'll use 3 inch thick steel when we cut the steel version since the
depth of the edgeline is important (as the original small Porta piece demonstrates).




Photographs by Cynthia Bill and Andrei Severny.

-- Edward Tufte, November 20, 2008


Halloween Porta

A temporary wooden mask for Porta:

-- Edward Tufte, November 24, 2008


Dog sculpture enlarged

Here is the process for enlarging the steel dog. Photographs by Andrei Severny and ET on December 20, 2008.




(The metal washers placed on the paper hold the template down flat on the scanner table.)

-- Edward Tufte, December 22, 2008


Plywood Porta mock-up in the snow

Photograph by Andrei Severny

-- Edward Tufte, December 22, 2008




Threads relevant to sculpture:
Airspaces
Bird Series
Aluminum and stainless steel; many, many pieces moving in the air.
Bouquet sculpture series--and Walking, Seeing, Constructing
Beginning of Bouquet series (now 7); along with theoretical statement beginning the volume 5 project.
Buddha with Bird Nest: sculpture
Complex sculptural shapes
Dear Leader I: landscape sculpture May 2006
Narrative piece about some mysterious porcelain objects in a stainless steel perspective box.
Escaping Flatland sculptures
Ten large stainless steel pieces in the landscape generate many views and painted color fields as the sun moves across the sky and the season changes.
Flame Theater
Georgia O'Keeffe and Escaping Flatland
Hogpen Hill #1: sculpture installed August 2006
First major piece (24 feet light, stainless steel) installed in new 122 acre sculpture park underway in Woodbury, Connecticut.
Larkin's Twig
The beautiful Twig. Steel, 32 feet high, with accompanying thread on reading the piece and the complexities of modeling large 3D objects.
Magritte's Smile
Millstone sculpture series
Massive industrial pieces sorting out circles and light. Redesigning and repurposing scrap from nuclear power plant.
Multiplicity in visual experiences (ET presentation for a museum show)
Open-Ended

Paradox sculptures
Petals 1-3
Aluminum hyperbolic paraboloids in the landscape reflect light and shadow. The pieces move with the contour of the land.
Rocket Science
Rocket Science #2 (Lunar Lander)
Sculpture: Negative space studies
Three table pieces; strong positive elements create active negative volumes (the air) to torque. Movies.
Seeing Around: New ET essay published
Skewed Machine
Spring Arcs, an ET landscape sculpture
Four solid stainless steel arcs in the landscape. Long thread, many photographs on meaning, construction, viewing of the piece.
Stainless steel images: anisotropic calligraphy
Big series of engraved 3D anisomorphic images that move with light.
Steel sculptures
Rough, thick, rusting steel, with surface images in the steel's patina.
Table sculptures
About a dozen major table pieces in wood, steel, stainless steel.
Theater Museum artworks
Tong Bird of Paradise
Towers: a new memorial for 9/11
Visual complexities of light, shadow, perpsective. Perforated stainless steel.
ZZ Smile (Zerlina's Smile)