I was commissioned to craft a sculpture to be displayed in a prominent position of the city. The subject was to concern modern day apprentices and the role of hidden public servants and services. Many ideas came up during brainstorming but the most simple one stuck and that was to give a form to something which only displayed the hidden image at different angles and different approaches up to the sculpture. The modern day apprentice is a "different approach" to a conventional way of learning and training and the idea of theses images rising out of ether, bringing order from chaos felt apt. The viewer reconstructs the image when looking at the work from exact angles the rest of the time it immediately diffuses into an abstract collection of shapes. The sculpture in this way provides a very direct natural form of interaction where the work is entirely dependent on the viewer movement and investigation.

The were just some of the initial sketchbook doodles.

I then thought it best to put into the computer to test its viability and what placement of sticks worked best. There needed to a random looking placement of struts but one which you could never see through to the other side yet still vary in depth as you looked at it. 

I did this by "projecting" some random images and photos onto the sculpture in the computer as a sanity test. I used a variety of more complex photos to simple geometric shapes to see what worked best or not all. Luckily they all seemed to work ok but with my experience of previous similar projects the block colour seemed to work well in most varying environmental factors at play.

At this point I drew the four images that thought would be representative of the apprentices and public servants in terms of support and the hidden framework they create. Be that communication, administrative, ideas & solutions and more. Simple hand drawn bold images were needed that could later be projected onto the sculpture to be drawn on to the struts. First the base and structure needed to be created. This involved alot of cutting, sawing, sanding and painting.

Once the elements were made and the paint dried on the struts they could be assembled into the base.

Once assembled, the four images, one at a time were projected onto the struts. Using heavy duty markers the projection was traced onto the struts. Each time a layer of struts was drawn on they were removed and then the next layer of struts were drawn on. This had to be done to make sure the effect worked because at this point I had no idea which struts would be cut where to create the topological relief so the pattern had to appear all the way through the entire depth of the structure. 

Once one side was painted it was rotated and the next image done until all four were complete.

The final sculpture was then moved to the city centre for public display.

The work won a competition voted on by the public and was also given direct praise by No.10 Downing Street.