final piece.

It's done! It's finally done! The pictures aren't as quality as I was hoping, and I still need to figure out a better way to hang the plates, but overall I'm excited and glad that they're complete.

The project started with the idea of creating a 4x4 grid and filling it with some sort of imagery that created movement. It wasn't until I came across a documentary on the Large Hadron Collider before I decided what that imagery would be. The "scribbles" on the back of the plates are representative of a particle collision. I found a few pictures from a bubble chamber and tried to make a semi-accurate depiction of the events that occur. Then the issue became glazing - should I leave them white or add color? I decided to take some of the lines that were created by the particle collision and employ a "paint-by-numbers" sort of thing.

At that point, the plates could have been complete. They were fully functional and fit together like I had hoped. But something was missing for me. That's when I came across a manganese based overglaze decal that my professor could print out. All I needed to do was give him a pdf with the imagery I wanted. I found some really beautiful script in some of Einstein's old notebooks to have printed and then cut and pasted them to fit into some of the negative space created by the color blocks.

The completed set. Each plate is 10 inches across.

Detail of the notebook decals.

Another view.

Close up shot.

Overall I'm pleased. I feel that some plates stand stronger individually than looking at them as a whole. It's a completely different experience seeing one alone and then viewing them as a unit. I might try and tackle another set of plates with similar imagery, but maybe make the color blocks a little more solid. Or not including them at all? Or take more advantage of the negative space that's created with the lines? Lots of things to think about with little time to execute.