Projects - Building - Light Box

My sister is a developing artist, and she gave me one of her first works; a welding sculpture about 3 feet tall. One of the terms she used to describe it was a spaceship taking off. I worked with a friend to build a light box that would illuminate the sculpture from underneath with red, orange, and yellow light. The effect is that the underside of the sculpture is lit with fiery colors, extending the idea that the sculpture really is taking off.

We started off with simple materials: wood, connecting screws and brackets, a pair of compact fluorescent fixtures and bulbs, and some thick Plexiglas. Making the corners was particularly difficult because it turned out that the saw wasn’t at 45 degrees and couldn’t be set at that angle. Ultimately, we got it as close as we could, and it looked good. We also discovered that the jigsaw was perfect for cutting the plexi. Once we had it built, I turned it on with just the white light, and it looked good, but not like fire. A few days later I took a piece of cardboard from a cereal box and cut out a bunch of organic shapes, then glued red, orange, and yellow tissue paper to the back sides of the pieces. Then I set the cardboard inside the box and put the plexi on top. We had to hack the lights so that the switch would be on the outside of the box. The final product looks really good. The pictures don’t do it justice, but taking pics of a light source is hard.