This piece grew from tiny (5cm) carousels.
I started with a photograph of an old painting of a lunar eclipse (see the images below). I liked the gentle blues and ochres in the picture.
I made some carousels 5cm high, experimenting with a round hole punch in the central concertina and a randomly assigned rectangular window at the front.
I played with size of the carousels, so the final piece has some larger and some smaller ones. In all I made 5 carousels, and in the end I only used 3, so the others will no doubt appear somewhere else soon!
I had an idea to form a chateau-like structure (like in the background of the image) with the little carousels. The magic happened when I found the perfectly sized shoe box to build in. And then I lined it with the dark blue eclipse diagram, which gave the whole thing a Joseph Cornell feel.
Never built anything from carousels before. Didn’t actually finish up using that idea, but it got me to where I am now, which is 3 carousels stacked one on top of the other. They are just secured with the back and front “covers” to the back wall of the box, so there’s some movement in them, which pleases me.
I made a mistake in covering the front of the box (i put the image on sideways) but corrected it by cutting windows from another sun/moon picture from the same calendar.
I’ve called it Lunar because it’s about lunar eclipses.
