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I stared at this pedestal and brass rod for a couple of days before I decided what to do, or rather start to do with it. On first sight I knew I wasn't going to use it as it appeared it was designed. In the back of my mind I had multiple ideas creating chaos so I decided to break it down to two parts. First I would design a base and worry about the top later. I had recently made some fairy wings and was able to envision 4 sets, converted to butterfly wings, surrounding the brass rod for a nice look and stability. I then came up with the glass covered wooden base with the drilled center hole for the brass rod to finalize a solid foundation. The glass I chose for the bottom, and ultimately the top piece, is called "Van Gogh", something I have only recently been introduced to. I designed a glass base to slide tightly over the upturned bottom of the pedestal. At this point I envisioned the antennae of the butterflies; twisted wire extending up and tacked to this base with the ends extending on and curving out. I proceeded to decide what exactly would be my top. Oil burning piece, fountain, candle holder? I opted for "The Crowned Butterfly" candle centerpiece. It has a mirrored bottom with beveled and Van Gogh glass sides, and twisted wire arcs. The butterfly antennae extend up and through the arcs to add to the crown effect. I used a sealant adhesive on the top base and the brass rod inside the bottom base for added security. The twisted wire antennae also add to the support.

       
   
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This entire project was a challenge! From the start, learning of the item we had to work with and it's limitations I began to think of what this item was "not" in order to find something creative to present. After 3 days of staring at the objects sitting listlessly on my desk at work, then at home in the evening it suddenly looked like the top of a building, sort of. VIOLA! That's what I ran with. What could possibly be one of the most recognized buildings in the American landscape? The Empire State Building of coarse.

The piece stands a daunting 46.25" tall from base to tip of brass tube spire and 13.5" x 9" at the base - 1/332.5 scale and weighs about 10-12 LB. The glass is Pilkington 1/2" reeded, which for all practical purposes was incredibly hard to find, but, from the onset of knowing I wanted to do a building it HAD to have this glass, I could picture the structure, with the tall slender lines of it's architecture accentuated by the horizontal "floors" of the base structures and top levels. Altogether it has 10 different levels of dimension, including the spire. I cut the windows in the spire and painted it silver to blend with the solder lines to give a more gradient effect in the transition between glass and wood. The brass tube is a representation of the dirigible mooring mast placed on the tower then later converted into a television antenna. The Electro-Luminescant lighting - however obscure in the photographs - represents the nighttime lighting schemes one can see on the various national/city holidays in NYC. The red white and blue scheme was the first scheme ever to be seen on the building in 1976 to commemorate the American Bicentennial. The back has a hinged door near the top to allow top access and the bottom quarter in the back is also open to allow addition of a plant in the future and easy access to the base.

My major challenges on this project began at finding the perfect glass - due to its apparent lack of availability - all the way through to how in the world I would be able to take good photographs of it. Of all these challenges the biggest were keeping my measurements accurate to the scale of the building, keeping them accurate to the scale of my design and remembering to take into account the thickness of the glass - which I forgot to on more occasions than I care to admit. The next challenge was fitting together all those pieces and then using only my two hands and some cardboard to balance and solder the whole thing together. It took me 2 full hours to clean and polish. It is the largest bulkiest 3-dimensional project I've ever been challenged with. All totaled cutting/foiling/soldering/cleaning/finishing took nearly 25 hours, nearly 8 sq. feet of reeded and 3 sq. feet of clear window glass (for non-vertical surfaces and part of the back), a full roll of black backed foil and about 2 LB of solder.

But I'm all the luckier to have made it because it's my very own little - really tall - piece of NY at night!