(all photos of the trailer homes courtesy of Bret Gustafson)
this installation was inspired by the stories that my mother would tell me about severe thunderstorms when i was a child. any time the weather would become ominous she would get really edgy. she lived in trailer homes throughout the mid-west when she was a child because my grandfather was a surveyor for the army core of engineers, which in turn, required that they reside in a trailer home because he was relocated constantly. this was the second time i had attempted to use my "lost-balsa" technique. we generally use a "lost wax" technique but i discovered that balsa sculpture with wax gating would burn out just as well as all wax. the process leaves the texture of the balsa so detailed that it appears to be painted wood.
