Keith Burton
Year 11
The Friends’ School, North Hobart, Tasmania
Teacher: Zach Sonstegaard, Technology
Myrtle, blackwood, brass
275mm diameter x 130mm
There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception. – Aldous Huxley
My piece of work is summarised perfectly by the quote above, being both known and unknown at the same time with the doors of perception wide open. The piece of work being a small box, with the shape based off the top half of an urchin without spines.
When my thought process first started on the brief of camouflage, the thing that came to mind was nature, because nothing is more camouflaged in the world than the world itself. I started to try and think of ways to incorporate the scenes of nature into something practical and useful, but it wasn’t until I drew on a past project that was originally meant to be made out of clay that I came up with the idea of the sea urchin.
From there it developed into incorporating more elements of nature, such as how the eight individual lids would work and look, where I drew upon features of the lotus flower and the shape of the Sydney Opera House’s different sections.
Keeping with the camouflage theme and my perception of nature and after finding a piece of myrtle with vibrant markings, it was then I started to turn and craft my urchin, battling through many issues on how it would be made, such as how to accurately cut a hollow bowl into eight identical pieces. Finally it came to a point where the box was taking shape, and with strips of blackwood as dividers it began to excite me with the way it looked and how it worked.
