For my Final Project i decided to create a Mountain Range Wall Art that imitates and takes inspiration from the Flatiron mountains as a gift for my little brother. After my up-cycling project, where I created a wall art from wine cork in the shape of New Zealand (as shown below), I decided to take a similar route for my final project. I really enjoyed making my up-cycling project and decided to why not upgrade the idea! This is basically how I formulated the realization and vision for my final project.

So once I knew that I wanted to do another wall art piece, I took some time to think about what I wanted to fabricate as the piece. It quickly came to me that I wanted to do a piece focused on the mountains, that was constructed from a nice and aesthetically pleasing quality wood. Since I wanted to make this as a gift for my little brother, who is soon to attend CSU as a Freshman, I decided what better way to incorporate the mountains and CU Boulder (the better school!) than to fabricate my final project in the shape of the infamous Flatiron mountains.

So, I began some research into if something like this had already been created and to generate ideas on what exactly I wanted to do. During my research, I found multiple techniques to accomplish the theme and simple, sturdy aesthetic I was aiming for. One such technique, was wood burning. This technique is basically drawing on wood with a heated rod, which “engraves/burns” the wood, allowing the artist to burn beautiful shapes and geometries into the face of the wood. This was interesting at the time, but didn’t really fit the bill, especially since wood burning required tons of practice and technique to accomplish intricate and beautiful designs.

From this point, I set my mind on cutting out the shape that you see above. However, as mentioned in previous posts and inspirations for my design, I had found the overall design and idea from a source through my research. A local one man company, called Bear Mountain Metal Art, run by Bobby Singleton, develops these amazing aluminum wall art mountain pieces (as shown below). He drew inspiration from the mountains in general, and when fabricating his designs, he uses an aluminum sheet and then cuts out the piece with a handheld plasma laser. His artwork popped up during my research, and I instantly fell in love with the art and design.

So, I decided to follow his template and design, and create my own founded off of his work. I started with simple sketches and ratios to determine the best size (width and height) of my final project. As shown below, I decided to settle on a 3 x 0.6 ft dimension for my final project. Rather than using Aluminum like Bobby, I decided to use a nice quality wood, to further distinguish my aesthetic of sturdy, beautiful simplicity. Mountains exemplify this as they are simplistic in their nature, and utterly shockingly beautiful. The wood also alluded to the natural feeling and calmness that nature, and the mountains more importantly, portray.

References:

• https://www.bearmountainmetalart.com/listing/522291719/boulder-mountain-range-flatirons-hiking