I was walking around the house patio yesterday, and my eyes happened to fall on a "Dome Shape" sitting among the flowerpots. It immediately triggered the vision of some king of domed "Temple of Wisdom", something we are in dire need of in these troubled political times. It is made of fiberglass covered with a mosaic of perfectly fitted rows of thin stone squares. It was a vask used in a Greek style tripod bronze stand, but was dropped and broken. Our friend Mike salvaged it and roughly patched it, which I kinda like for the dome of a busted up, long abandonned and battered "Temple of Wisdom":
It is 17.25" in diameter and 10" tall, which is a little odd, higher than half of a perfect sphere. It also immediately made me think of one of my favorite Architects ever: Claude Nicolas Ledoux
With Etienne Louis Boullée and Jean-Jacques Lequeu, he is considered the main exponent of 18th century "Utopian Architecture" reflecting the "Revolutionary" ideals of "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité".
A Google search led me to a couple of watercolors by Lequeu for a "Temple de la Terre". The inscription above the door reads "A la Sagesse Suprême", which translates as " To Supreme Wisdom", exactly what we need the most:
I also found a watercolor of a strange domed structure, a Folly I suppose:
I can definitely already visualize a design combining all three concepts into one, using a stepped pedestal and columns all around the outside like the second, leaving peepholes around the base of the dome and door openings like the third, and using a background drawing of the globe on the outside of the dome like the first one. May be something along these lines:
The cylindrical "wall" would bear drawings, words and images both on the outside and the inside(thus the peepholes and doors). LEDs would light the inside. I am wondering whether to also paint the inside of the dome itself... In this case, a mirrored "floor" would be needed to reflect it so it can be seen...
It might end up looking something like this structurally, with added background drawings, and a lot of Grafitti:
The wall of the temple is going to be cylindrical. However, I need to do the Encaustic work flat on the table. The only way I can think of doing this is to use two sheets of very thin wood veneer glued to a heavy paper backing(the same I used to make stained trompe l'oeil "wood frames". One will be the inside wall, the other the ouside wall. When finished, they will be rolled, and attached to wood studs coming out of the stepped base:
In the meantime, I have spent hours researching "WISDOM", and sifting through thousands of "QUOTES" from all kinds of people from Antiquity to the present time. I favored short ones obviously, because they will become Grafitti, but also actually found that the shortests are usually the best. Wisdom should be distilled to its very essence, and it shouldn't take a thousand words to sum things up.
I have long been a "Font Freak", and have a collection of thousands of unusual free fonts, including many "Grafitti Fonts". As I was collecting my favorite quotes, I copy/pasted them in Photoshop in different Grafitti Fonts to get an idea of how they would read:
It is 17.25" in diameter and 10" tall, which is a little odd, higher than half of a perfect sphere. It also immediately made me think of one of my favorite Architects ever: Claude Nicolas Ledoux
With Etienne Louis Boullée and Jean-Jacques Lequeu, he is considered the main exponent of 18th century "Utopian Architecture" reflecting the "Revolutionary" ideals of "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité".
A Google search led me to a couple of watercolors by Lequeu for a "Temple de la Terre". The inscription above the door reads "A la Sagesse Suprême", which translates as " To Supreme Wisdom", exactly what we need the most:
I can definitely already visualize a design combining all three concepts into one, using a stepped pedestal and columns all around the outside like the second, leaving peepholes around the base of the dome and door openings like the third, and using a background drawing of the globe on the outside of the dome like the first one. May be something along these lines:
The cylindrical "wall" would bear drawings, words and images both on the outside and the inside(thus the peepholes and doors). LEDs would light the inside. I am wondering whether to also paint the inside of the dome itself... In this case, a mirrored "floor" would be needed to reflect it so it can be seen...
It might end up looking something like this structurally, with added background drawings, and a lot of Grafitti:
The wall of the temple is going to be cylindrical. However, I need to do the Encaustic work flat on the table. The only way I can think of doing this is to use two sheets of very thin wood veneer glued to a heavy paper backing(the same I used to make stained trompe l'oeil "wood frames". One will be the inside wall, the other the ouside wall. When finished, they will be rolled, and attached to wood studs coming out of the stepped base:
In the meantime, I have spent hours researching "WISDOM", and sifting through thousands of "QUOTES" from all kinds of people from Antiquity to the present time. I favored short ones obviously, because they will become Grafitti, but also actually found that the shortests are usually the best. Wisdom should be distilled to its very essence, and it shouldn't take a thousand words to sum things up.
I have long been a "Font Freak", and have a collection of thousands of unusual free fonts, including many "Grafitti Fonts". As I was collecting my favorite quotes, I copy/pasted them in Photoshop in different Grafitti Fonts to get an idea of how they would read:
