Andrew Hunt from Blue Ridge Community Church in Forest, VA brings us this cool use of fabric. (Originally posted June 2014)
The precursor to this design was the Slab Wood design. It had hard lines, jagged edges, and worst of all…icky splinters. As the design team got together, they all agreed it was time to get in touch with their softer sides. Rather than turning to Sears, or the killer fabric of our lives, they turned to the glorious king of sheen: Satin. The nice thing about working with soft goods is that they can fill a lot of space quickly. The idea was to involve some sort of arch in the middle of the stage from which they could pull fabric and symmetrically stretch it out like rays of sunshine. They also wanted to create some depth by making two layers.
What type of satin you might ask? PolySheen Satin in white of course. They purchased three 600 yard spools but only used 1.5. They plan to save what they don’t use for future designs around the building in the coming years.
A friend of Andrew’s who works at a local metal shop they sold them three 20′ pieces of 6061 3/4″ Schedule 40 aluminum pipe for $66.34. They don’t own a fancy pipe roller. but it just so happened that Andrew had met a young man who did have access to one. He allowed Andrew and another stage designer to come over and bend some pipe. (Thank you Will Smith and the Liberty University Scenic Shop!) The front arch was bent to an approximate 6′ radius. The back to approximately 3′. They are more than a half circle so they are actually about a foot taller than the radius.
They used a wall mount from The Light Source to anchor the ends of the pipe to the stage floor. If you were paying close attention, you’ll notice that the pipe they purchased was 3/4″ but the wall mount was for 1.5″ pipe. They used special high tech shims hand made by precisely chiseling the end grain of a 2×4 with the claw end of a hammer. *Please note the sarcasm…this was not precise…but it did work beautifully.
The fabric is wrapping around a pipe at the top and sides and fastened to itself using safety pins. Then it travels to the arch and back up at a different angle to the outer pipe. They left a gap of about 1.5′ on the center arch between the next run of satin. Spacing between the two layers was about 3′ to allow stage flow.
They used 9 ETC Selador Palettas and 5 High End Studio Beams to provide the color.
Beautiful!
Beautiful designs