It’s time to get to work on a mountain for my installation! This will be a mountain that a model train can go through, so it needs to be big and sturdy.

After getting advice from people who know about models and soft sculpture, I decided to get some foam from Canal Rubber (“serving your rubber needs at the same location since 1954″). I feel so cool and awesome when I buy something at these kinds of specialty materials stores, and this time I got to go home with two big blocks of foam!

Soupy found them mildly interesting.

foammountain1

Carving one of the blocks was pretty easy—I just worked away at it with a serrated knife—but messy! I started carving at around 11 pm last night, and by midnight I was all sweaty and covered in foam. (Well, that sounds more disgusting than it actually was.) But I think I made good progress, the idea being that if I can make a rough shape with a big enough hole in the middle, then I can always add more foam to build up the outer shape before giving it a knitted covering.

foammountain2

Before I got the foam, I laid out the track the other day and tried to envision the layout as a whole. (It should be super crazy and colorful!) The pile of yarn on the right represents mountains.

showprep8.2

This mountain will probably be the biggest piece in the installation, so I’m eager to make it and see how it’s going to turn out.

Share this post: