Brecht Wright Gander shares his labor-intensive work of art with a cartoonish form and copper gilding in this Deconstruction.

Some of my favorite work every year at Design Miami/ belongs to Brecht Wright Gander, a Rhode Island-born, New Jersey-based artist and designer known for his experimental work that slides the functional into sculptural pieces of art. His latest is the Illumination Machine #1, a piece with a cartoonish silhouette that disguises elegant copper gilding on the inside of the illuminated funnel. The sculpture combines a variety of materials that require different techniques to achieve, resulting in a labor-intensive work of art that Brecht shares in this month’s Deconstruction. The piece was designed for Objective Collection’s new gallery in Shanghai which presented the work over the summer. Read on to see the design process behind the Illumination Machine #1: Illumination Machine #1 concept sketch

The initial form required a lot of wrestling. I wanted this piece to be human scale ? to have the presence of a body and an eye-level approach.

The interior is hollow and has a kind of wormhole shape. I wanted to make sure that no matter how far you poked your head in, the surfaces were finished. So naturally I had to climb inside to do the finishing. The form is made with plaster and fiberglass.

I call this area of the lamp ?the oculus.? First I lay fiberglass atop plaster. Then I microcoat the fiberglass in cement. I impregnate the ceme...