Duncan Meerding , Trunk Lights (ART & OBJECTS 2024)

Photos:

Michele Warner

Video tour

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C11Yv7ur1Bt/

The time between visualisation and actuality for creating these lights was quite extended. The Trunk Lights came to fruition in their full human sized continuous form in April 2023, after many years of wanting to do them, but not having the tooling to do so. The crux of their creation was working out how to core out the middle of a tree trunk, whilst keeping in-tact. I needed a big enough void for putting in decent light sources. I sourced a 5 -metre-long metal lathe and repurposed it as a giant boring machine. A custom drill bit was designed and made to make holes that were 160 mm wide and up to 2metres long. The cracks were carved around the feature of each log in turn. Utilising power carving and hand carving/ finishing techniques. Each trunk light has very unique crack light apertures, influenced by the form of each Trunk. The result is randomised light inspired by the light dappling effect often found under a forest canopy. This vision of light bursting from the periphery and the highly tactile nature of my work, reflects the alternative sensory world in which I design and make, being legally blind with less than 5% vision concentrated around the periphery. This light effect for the Trunk Light, evokes primitive feelings of relaxation and whimsy much like the smaller counterparts of the original Cracked Log Lamp and Stump designs first created 2009 and 2014 respectively. The light source inside was made for each Trunk Lights specifications and utilised dot free warm white (2700 k) LED strip, aluminium, and and an acrylic frosted diffuser, which doubled up as a secondary ingress protection. The specific lighting components were chosen after checking many different light sources inside samples, I wanted uniform light, quite a bit of it and not to have the observers hit in the face with a high glare item. The final custom made light source fulfilled all of these requirements. Like most artists and designer makers having a deadline really helps in pushing forwards ambitious projects. I had a deadline of May 2023, to get the first Trunk’s made this way to be put in the Vivid Sydney, ‘Light walk’. The work was called ‘Light Forest’ and it was a walk through experiential, evocative work at Barangaroo Reserve, with 16 300 mm -350 mm wide (aprox) individual lights in a clearing style arrangement. 10 Stump lights of 400 mm height with 6 Trunk lights of varying heights (2 x 2m, 1 x 1.6 m, 2 x 1.2m and 1 x 0.8m) created this new large sized installation styled work. For this installation large steel plates were made to hold the items into the ground with ground anchors, especially important with the large number of people interacting directly with the works through out the festival. Since Vivid I have also developed a variety of different fixing methods for different surfaces and applications. All end grain and nots exposed to the elements have also been sanded and finished with Osmo UV Protect satin oil. The lights are made from macrocarpa, chosen for its aesthetic appeal, as well as outdoor rot resistant properties. Alongside this, I chose it due to its relatively fast grow rate and prevalence as a salvaged material.

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