Art Fabrication

In her third collaboration with Sigma Design Company, ceramics artist Rebecca Manson created “Crowded Bed”, a landscape sculpture featuring a riot of delicate, ceramic flowers balanced upon graceful, metal branches made from tubular stainless steel. Each stem was torched, twisted, and arched to replicate its fluidity in nature. Every flower was hand crafted by Manson, with each one displaying amazing botanical detail. Working with Sigma Design Company’s fabrication team, the artist spent hours placing over 300 delicate ceramic blossoms on the stems. The team worked on creating a sense of movement within the sculpture, replicating the way plants will move with a breeze or turn toward the sun.

The sculpture was a custom creation for the winery, Donum Estate in Sonoma, California, The prestigious Donum Collection is one of the world’s largest accessible private sculpture collections.

Manson worked with the landscape architects at Donum to build a fluid relationship between its context (the cutting garden) and the sculpture. Donum is all about bringing together wine, nature, and art. “The wine enhances the art, the art enhances the wine, with nature being the backbone of the whole experience. To me this piece is all about the senses, and Donum is truly the perfect home for it”, says Manson.

So how does an artist get from concept to fabrication? Manson called Sigma Design Company. When asked how working with Sigma helped her overall practice as an artist, Manson replied, “It’s been an incredibly rewarding collaboration. It’s liberating and empowering to incorporate logic and scientific thinking into my practice. Mystery can lead to anxiety when I’m figuring out new things, sometimes. Sigma helps me to unlock the mysteries and therefore feel much more in control.”

Creating enough structural strength without sacrificing movement was an artistic and engineering challenge. Continuous testing of the stems; their geometry, and their ability to hold varying weights of blooms was one such ‘mystery’ that Sigma Design Company was able to solve for the artist.

From industrial design to art fabrication, let Sigma Design Company be your one stop engineering design and fabrication partner!
Links to 2 other projects by the artist:

‘Come Closer’ Arriving in Tribeca Park

Gutter, 2021 by Rebecca Manson