The Olin School involved a slightly different set of challenges: carved wood of donors and honorifics placed above the doors to various lecture halls within the new business school facility. This project involve a series of trips to St. Louis, MO to work on campus at the University of Washington at St. Louis, mostly to carve the wood transoms, although the final trip included a donor engraving involving stainless steel lettering inlaid into the terrazzo flooring of a landing between two floors in the open interior atrium of the building.
This work on this project was performed under the direction of the lead creative designer at KOLAR, one of the mid-west’s premier EG design firms based in Cincinnati, OH.
Each position was meticulously carved by hand with small wood chisels and then pigmented. The carving involved standing prone on a small 12-inch square ladder platform for hours on end. The kinetic clench needed to hold the body and arms fast and steady in order to achieve the precision necessary to perform the carving was a deceptively exhausting posture of rigid musculature that is hard to explain to someone who hasn’t spent weeks doing this type of carving work. The result is spectacular and the simple elegance of the finished carving is very satisfying to behold.
