Sami Lee Woolhiser: Spring Quarter Final Works

Hey everyone! This has been an incredible-overwhelming-exhausting-wonderful quarter. Here is the work I have produced for the Advanced Digital Sculpture class!

Alcove, fiber and wood, 38x38x24 inches, 2013

Mountain,  paper, acrylic and plastic, 12x24x12 inches, 2013

Summit, paper, acrylic and plastic, 15x15x15 inches, 2013

Crossroads, paper, acrylic and plastic, 24x24x12 inches, 2013

Archway, paper and bolts, 96x96x48 inches, 2013

Sami Lee Woolhiser: Fashion Show Installation

So only a week ago I was asked by Professor Kelley McClung to produce an installation for Broughton St. in Savannah, GA for the SCAD Fashion Show. I am so grateful for all of the support and help from my professors Kelley McClung and Andrew F. Scott as well as my friends Devin Thompson, Ty Derousseau, Rebecca Lemker, Daniella Zeman, Anne Mason and Audrey Dakin.

Here are the results!
Click here for the Process

Sami Lee Woolhiser: Crystal Installation Process

The digital segment for this project required four programs including Maya, Pepakura, Illustrator and Rhino.

Maya: I designed the elements in Maya simply by creating a cube, extruding faces and continually manipulating the shape via control points and corners.  This was the fun part.
One problem I had with the original test models was that the faces were warped in the digital world and when I laser cut them out of eflute they weren't meant to bend. To solve this I simply cut all of the polygons into triangles so that the three points would create a flat surface, this was a full proof way to make sure I didn't run into that problem again when actually fabricating the pieces.

Maya

Pepakura: An amazing program, also a fun part. Here I unfolded all of the structures.

Pepakura

Illustrator: This can be a tricky step. It is crucial to make sure that all of your lines are expanded so that they are individual segments or the laser will read them as one line and not cut the dashed mountain valley lines. It is also important at this stage to convert everything into a hairline at .001 pt thick so that the laser only cuts each dash once.

Illustrator

Rhino: The not so fun part, make sure that there are no duplicates at this stage. Explode all block instances until all that remains are curves.

Rhino

Devin Thompson working Pepakura magic!

Anne Mason

Ty Derousseau

only about half of the pieces made

Transporting them! 

In the warehouse 

Pre-Fashion Show, raining!

So this project came together really quickly, I only had a week to design, laser cut and fabricate this installation. I just want to thank Professor Kelley McClung for the opportunity and Professor Andrew F. Scott for all of his support and the knowledge about digital fabrication that he has passed on to me.

I had a tremendous amount of help with the digital elements from Devin Thompson, another talented  Sculptor. When it came to actually fabricating the works I had a ton of help from my friends Audrey Dakin, Ty Derousseau, Devin Thompson, Daniella Zeman and Anne Mason! Also the Gulfstream Lab was awesome for accommodating this project. And the SCAD Physical Resources department was incredible in their dedication to this event and their willingness to help with anything and everything!

Sami Woolhiser: Fiber Relief 2, Laser Cutter

I am working on two fiber relief works, similar to my installation Passage. These are smaller studies made in a similar fashion. However, here I am utilizing 3D modeling technology in Rhino and a Laser cutter.

Here I am simply subtracting objects from the main form with the Boolean2Objects tool. Here I can click through the results and have the pyramid forms removed from the cube.

Below I have used the command "Contour" which allows me to extract serial information from the model which can be read by the laser.

Because the hanging sheets of fabric won't be strong enough to support the undercuts I have hand drawn flaps that will be cut instead of the pentagonal shapes. Here I can sew back these flaps with inserted supports.

Sami Lee Woolhiser: Heightfield and Boolean

Here are the baby steps in a few of my projects this quarter. First I am playing with some translation drawings that I have digitally drawn and then converted to a 3 dimensional surface in Rhino using the Heightfield command. Using Illustrator you seem to get different results than with a pixel based image from photoshop.

 In Rhino you can see that I have converted it to a solid by projecting my initial heightfield surface to the Cplane, then lofting the edges of the surface on the cplane to the heightfield surface. After I have all of these surfaces constructed all it takes is a join to combine them into an inherent solid!

Here is another project I am working on. These will be fiber relief sculptures, I hope to use a variety of fabrics and materials to achieve a gradient in value as well as texture. My goal is to make at least two of these.

These are essentially smaller versions of an installation called Passage.

Photo Credit: Matt King

Here is the beginning of my Rhino modeling. Keeping these simple at first, the layout is for a paper maquette. 

Sami Lee Woolhiser: First and Second Translations

I have been working with a method that I call "translating". This is simply the act of interpreting and reacting to my environment, previous translations and my materials. All of these are influences in each work as it continues its metamorphosis through different mediums, dimensions and is affected by time, development of ideas and so forth.
Here are some images of my sketchbook (first translations) and digital drawings (second translations) that were created based on the first translation. These digital drawings will translate well to 3D models later on.

Sketches:

Digital Drawings: Photoshop