Page 103 - Marlie Burton Roche : Landscape and Bread

cocoon

EARLIER WORK

Cholesteric liquid crystals undergo dramatic changes of colour with very small changes in

temperature. The colours go through the whole spectrum as the crystals heat up, with blues

indicating the hottest parts and reds the coolest. The colour change reverses on cooling.

I bought the crystals ‘raw’ and mixed them, programming the mix for specific temperature
ranges. Then I would dissolve the mixture in chloroform and apply it (spray it) onto precut

forms of clear acrylic sheeting. Another layer of acrylic was put on top of that and then I

would seal the cholersteric liquid crystals permanently inside the two acrylic sheets.
I used heavy black acrylic sheeting in conjunction with the forms that contained the sealed-

in cholesteric crystals to construct sculptures. The black allowed the colours to show up
dramatically as they changed back and forth through the colour spectrum. Most of the work I
did was programmed for room temperatures. The colours would only respond when someone

The ‘cocoon’ (white) sculptures were made by building a structure out of welded steel rods

then spraying polyvinyl chloride, mixed with a webbing agent, across/over the rods. I used
touched the work.
an industrial compressor and the vinyl plus webbing-agent mix would come out in long web-
like filaments that caught on the rods and spanned across the open spaces. I could gradually
build up convoluted forms, like a skin stretched over the rods. The building of the form was
controlled, sort-of, by the angle of the nozzle. When I had the form I wanted, I would spray
pure polyvinyl chloride, without the webbing agent, but mixed with a white pigment, over the

webbed skin surface.