George Parke, Hot Air Balloon (ART, OBJECTS 2022)

Photos:

Georgina Steytler

My Hot Air Balloon project was made using the bowl from a broad concept developed by Hal Metlitsky from USA about ten years ago. I have made lots of bowls using this technique and it can give you a visual feast involving hundreds to thousands of pieces of wood. The limitation is that it gives you a basic V-shaped bowl and you have to look inside and outside of the bowl to appreciate it. The balloon gives you all the show on the outside. The balloon uses twice as much wood as the bowl does as the walls start out thicker so you can get your round shape. As the balloon had to be hung up I wanted the presentation to be complementary to it. The base is WA sheoak with some embossing. I laminated sheoak and jacaranda for the stand and carved it to give it some lightness and to show the lamination. The balloon can be rotated to give the viewer an appreciation of the different patterns. Made from pecan, rosewood, sheoak, wandoo, woody pear, red cedar. The patterns to be made using this technique are limitless and I have just started. Balloon is 400mm high by 240mm wide.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.