Smith College Museum of Art—Votives Project
Spring 2003, commissioned work
As it prepared for its recent renovation, Smith College Museum of Art had been on the verge of disposing of thousands of old glass “lantern slides” containing images of art from antiquity.
My friend Nan, a fellow sculptor, rescued the slides and commissioned me to develop and produce a series of two hundred votive candle boxes, using the slides as the walls of the boxes.
First I developed a simple jig for taping the edges of the slides with copper foil tape (see above). Then, using a vise to hold the slides at right angles to each other, I soldered them together (see below).
While I have since passed the torch of assembly to another willing set of hands, the votive holders remain a popular item in the Museum Store.
