Finished Work

In the middle of the day the light is so beautiful
as it illuminates the surfaces and casts colorful shadows below. Later in the day the shadow
falls into the pool and as you swim under water you pass through the blue, green, and purple
light.

I am glad to be home, this installation was both challenging and inspiring, and I am looking forward to expanding this work and seeing what new forms come out of this.

please pass this page on to anyone who might find it interesting, and any inquiries may be directed to anthonycastronovo
(at)gmail.com.

Light

Wow, I cant believe it is actually finished! It has been a long three weeks here,
and five months in the studio in Columbus leading up to this point.

Today I did the final cleaning of the finished work, and then spent some time just looking from as many different angles as i could find. The light coming through
the piece is so beautiful- In the middle of the day a mottled blue-green-purple shadow is cast below and sometimes into the pool. Water was a large inspiration for this piece as I was trying to bring that feeling of immersion into the space
of the sculpture

Sleep

Progress

Today I made good progress and almost completed the final canopy. Everything is finally
coming together and soon it will be time to take down the tent and see how the piece actually
looks!

Getting Closer

This is a collage of the most recent photos taken yesterday. I am now working alone as Katy
has returned to Columbus. Today We attached the last few branches before she left, and I spent the rest of the day finishing the welds and adding a few more pieces. By the end of tomorrow I
should be close to finished with the third and final tree! It has been hard to visualize the
form of the overall structure from inside the tent, and I cant wait to take down the tent and view
the finished work!

The Installation Crew

Katy and Anthony Castronovo....

(mr and mrs CRAZY)

Look what we built

so here it is folks...the wind bocker. fully completed with roof by noon today.

Katy has to leave on monday afternoon. So we have 3 days to finish the whole thing, and take down this lovely wood structure....we should give it a name...

We couldnt do any work yesterday. So instead of sitting around any more days, we decided to do something: to build a house over the sculpture to block the wind.

a run to lowes before dinner, and making walls and connecting them after dinner, we finished the structure last night just before midnight.

Here is our "worried buyer" Larry Rubin. he looks pretty concerned that the sculpture wont ever get done.

He and his son, Simon, helped us to lift the huge walls up to where they had to go.

the casualty

then the wind picked up, the fastest wind we've had so far: and a ladder tipped over form the wind and landed right on one of the glass disks.....

but for a huge heavy ladder to land on it, it held up really really well. The glass just breaks in lines and doesnt shatter and fall all over: so we eventually said that this was a good occasion.

However, we couldnt work anymore, because the tent wasnt....so we decided to relax a little. this was good for our souls...
tomorrow is supposed to be less windy...we'll see!

we woke up this morning with the ambition that we would finish the first tree today...

we welded most of the canopy really quickly...and were very hopeful that we could finish each tree in one day: that the three trees would take three days....

Tuesday:
Today was even more windy than yesterday...........!!!!!!!!
But we finally perfected our wind tent as much as we could (ant bought some more tarps and clamps). Isnt it beautiful? There was a point where the tall ladder almost fell over, using the tarp as a sail.

we did not anticipate this wind problem...and we get pretty mad sometimes...and it feels like we are getting nothing done..but when I look at these pictures, it does seem like were are getting somewhere...

anyway: send us some positive vibes...we need them!

monday was exceptionally frustrating with the wind and trying to figure out a working tent. The only pictures we have of this day were when we were cleaning up for the night, and had just taken down the tarps that werent working very well...we both thought it an interesting picture with all the ladders around the pieces.

"The Wind Catastropy"

The good news: The first two canopy parts were welded on!

The Bad news: the wind is a problem. We are on the Jersey Coast and there is lots of wind that changes directions all the time...this messes up the weld, and it's been really frustrating. Here you see our first attempt at a wind blocking system using ladders and a tarp.

to sum up the problem: when welding, you attach a hose that feeds argon gas into the weld to protect it from oxygen, which corrodes it. Even a little bit of wind just blows the argon away.

After a long day, Anthony cleaned some welds and we called it a night.

the oldest son, Simon, poses by the sculpture.

more branches are added....

All the trees were anchored by yesterday morning...
and anthony welds on...

Noah thinks about hitting Anthony with a noodle while he is drilling....

and a view of the pool next to the sculpture

After a couple days, we finally got ahold of a water drill that does the job perfectly: 9, 1.5" holes through stone and concrete.

The sun is setting as Anthony starts drilling...