Steampunk Time Travel Art Installation at Truth Coffee

May I suggest you get comfortable and have a mug of coffee on hand before you delve into this photo heavy post...  you could be here a while...

Above is the final art installation piece (3.6m x 1.8m) with airship and below is the beginning of its story which started in June of 2014 when I created this canvas below about Tim Holtz and Truth Coffee...

I posted this little canvas on Twitter and the owners of Truth Coffee went mad for it... I took it in to them and they asked if I did commissions... the answer was YES and so over the next 19 months I have been purchasing stuff and creating even more things for this enormous task.

Here you can see the giant 1.3m clock and the various items I have Steampunked using loads of Tim Holtz's products. 

This was the beginning of the banner saying "beware of Airship Pirates in this vicinity"

After a while I had quite an eclectic pile of things growing on my dining room table...  The pvc gutter piping was sprayed copper and had rivets glued on.

I cut giant cogs out of foam core bord and sprayed everything silver.

Three weeks ago I had 3 large Masonite boards cut to 1.2m x 1.8m and base coated them with a beige PVA and set out all the items I had made so far.  I then decided the cogs needed to be copper...

Having decided where it was all going and having marked it out, I set about gluing the half orbs down.

When the glue was dry, I started painting the boards with artists acrylics.

At this stage, they were all on my tables in my studio, but this was hard to see the overall effect when I added all the cogs and other 3D items, so I dropped it down onto the floor.

 Here you can see me giving the whole thing a glaze of burnt umber to warm it up a bit.

This is the layout I finally decided on, but everything was still too shiny and new, so I set about aging it all.

 from this... to this...

To be able to visualize everything properly, I had to take the boards to my house... this involved getting a friend with a VW caravel to transport it for me for which I was most grateful.

This is the artwork together with the airship (how I made that is here) in my garage.

 I then deliberated between the hands on the clock or swapping them with the swards on the scroll... see above and below...

Eventually this option won!

 Seeing as Tim Holtz is known for technique tags and he was part the reason I got this commission in the first place... I used a shipping tag for my name!

The airship about to take her maiden voyage of 22km to Truth's HQ at 36 Buitenkant Street.

Where she took up temporary residence under the coffee beans...

 The van did not have space for the giant clock as well as the artwork and airship, so I had tied it to the roof of my car!

 Then the 4 hour job of installing it all began... I give you... The blank wall...

To install this project I had help from Nathan and Patrick from Truth and here you can see my hubby helping Nathan who is drilling the holes in the boards while still on the floor.

 I was an assistant too, passing up the necessary bolts etc... 

 Here are the boards before we stared adding the 3D stuff.

 Then we added all the items piece by piece

 Until it was just the decor items that had to go on suitcases which are floating shelves.

 and finally put up the airship

My ecstatic face in front of my artwork 

 I have truly left my mark!

In this shot you can see the dress form on the far right which was placed here in July 2014 in anticipation of her backdrop arriving!

Above is the before shot and below is the after shot!

I would like to thank David, Richard and Andrew from Truth Coffee for giving me this opportunity to create something for their building and allowing me to realise a dream.

If you have made it this far and would like to read the manifesto I wrote about this piece, read on:

 Steampunk

noun

A genre of science fiction that typically features steam-powered machinery rather than advanced technology.

This installation art piece by Belinda Basson is a play on time and travel.  The non-functional clock’s hands have been intentionally removed by the airship pirates and their swords put in their place thus creating an interesting juxtaposition and reminding the viewer of the thief of time.

Images supporting both the idea of time and travel re-occur with the use of a miniature alarm clock which looks like it has been brought up from the depths of the ocean after many years of languishing there, its hands stuck at 3 o’clock.  Then there is the genuine hour glass where the sands of time will slide by over a measured hour.  This stands on a vintage suitcase which has been worked over in embossed metal foil with images that depict engaged cogs as from the internal workings of a clock and compass to emphasise the relation to the mannequin standing meters away who wears a foil corset and has matching “skin”.  Her framed male counterpart above her harks back in time to the Victorian era when paper cut out portrait silhouettes were the height of fashion.

The leather suitcase stands open to display the items the time travelling voyager might have used to plan their travels, such as the globe to plot the route, typewriter to communicate anecdotes of the things witnessed back to their loved ones and the camera to capture all the memories for posterity.

Part of the installation, but hanging some distance away, is the rivet studded airship with a gondola depicting a somewhat altered version of the Truth Coffee building, in which it is suspended.  The airship’s stabilisers take their design from the Truth Coffee shop’s logo while the nose-cone and propeller seem to have been retrieved from the same mysterious ocean depths as the miniature alarm clock.

All of this is set against a sea of cogs and pipes aged and rusted due to lack of use, reminiscent of a time when steam was the height of power.

The Birth of an Airship

I know I have been AWOL lately, but this is a large reason for me not being at my desk.  This and a 3.8m (12ft) x 1.8m (6ft) art installation for Truth Coffee.

In March of 2015 I was commissioned to do an art installation for the "best coffee shop in the world" for 2015... I kid you not... Google that statement and it will come up! 

 This is a photo heavy post...

What started out as a pile of randomness finished up as the airship seen above!!!!

To build the fuselage I began with 7 hula hoops, one bigger than all the rest for the center hoop. 

 Then I cable tied the 3m long strips of electrical conduiting to the hula hoops on pre-measured and marked points.  along the way I decided only 5 hula hoops were needed.

I then used the most complex tool of all to join the nose and tail together.... Wait for it.... Packaging tape!  

The nose cone is a vuvuzela (a relic from the 2010 soccer world cup held here in SA) and the boat propeller which I salvaged at car boot sale proved to be too heavy, so I manufactured one out of a mini hazard cone and foam core board.  When the glue dried I sprayed it copper and added texture paste so that I could pant it to look old and rusted.

While this was "aging" I covered the "highly engineered" (tongue in cheek) frame with fabric using gel medium which I painted brown when it was dry.

 I then went back to the hardware store for the I umpteenth time to get a floursescent tube light fitting, wiring and some "Mc Guyver" parts to suspend it inside the airship.  (By now the men had given up asking if they could help me while I wandered the isles of bolts, rivets and electrical parts - probably wondering what a girl with bright pink hair could be up to with her eclectic shopping sprees)

I found 24m of webbing to cover the joins in the fabric and 700 rivets were used to make it look pretty.

So that the light can be worked on in the future, I made access hatches on both ends of the airship sealed with Velcro.  You can see this below as well as a wet coat of gel medium which sealed the pores of the fabric making the ship glow instead of being able to see the light fitting through the fabric when the light was on.

I then glued some paper cogs onto her sides for added steampunk vibe and wrapped her nose and tale in fabric tape to give a bit more strength to the packaging tape.

I decided she needed some stabilizers and using the logo from the coffee shop, I devised some fins in 3 layers of foam core.  

This is the top of the fins where I marked the spot to glue the straws into which the carbon fiber rods will slide.  The underside has the design on it so you see it when you look up.

To make the gondola I made a structure out of foam core again... My favorite building material... and covered it in an engineered photo of the Truth Coffee building which I had printed locally.  As the public will be viewing this from below, I created the illusion of bricks underneath her and because the office will view her from above, I added corrugated cardboard painted silver to emulate a cast iron roof.  I then suspended this under her hull with some chain.

In the photo above, I was working out how to do the ends of the gondola.  I eventually cut the ends oval to emanate the ones on the Zeplin

I used texture paste through a stencil I made from Tim's brick die.

Above has the base coat of paint, below, I rubbed the Archival Coffee ink pad directly onto the raised areas.

Here you see her upside down on my desk as I worked...

The last things to go onto the fuselage was the nose cone and propeller which got glued on and the fins which had carbon fiber rods to slide onto which run right through the fuselage and into straws under tape...  Yet another "Mc Guyver job".  

Here she is in my car port where I built her over a period of 5 months