Behind the Scene : Aaron Scott
I began the Loch series a couple of years ago. Loch means ‘hole’ in German, and the concept for the series was to take a solid volume and remove material by sculpting-out areas not essential to the minimal engineering of the form. For this project I decided to use softwoods to emphasize the lightness of the material and foreground the strong grain patterns of the gymnosperm species. For the coffee table I began with the idea of a solid volume with two opposing holes that grow larger until there is only thin, bone-like structure remaining. Once I had decided on the dimensions of the glass top was able to figure out the proportions of the base, and I began sculpting plaster mock-ups. By the third or fourth iteration I arrived at an overall shape that felt right.
I then scaled-up the proportions to life size and began milling and gluing up the pieces of Western Cedar. The gluing process took several days. A challenge with many of my glue-ups is making sure that I have adequate material to sculpt the eccentric curves and angles while at the same time accounting for the practical aspects of the clamping process (stacked-lamination relies only on glue for bonding). This was indeed the case with this piece, since the angles were quite extreme. Once the lamination was complete I sculpted the final form using hand-carving tools.
