Material benefits: Sculpture designer finds beauty in the cracks

Kansas City – Synthesis by Tom Price is a careful study of materials in which the designer combined tar and resin to create sculptures that mimic nature while simultaneously looking other-worldly.

Created for Price’s solo exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, Price’s starting point for the pieces was to explore how resin could be manipulated. Price noticed that resin created petal-like fractures when mixed incorrectly, and when tar was added the thick viscous material would fill the cracks in unexpected ways, creating a pattern that looks like vivid, colourful cracking ice or a sea bed filled with vibrant, protruding coral.

‘The works evolved from experimenting with materials, rather than directly drawing inspiration from the natural world,’ Price tells LS:N Global. ‘But the fact that the pieces do look mineral-like is of particular interest to me as it brings into question our perception of value when considering materials and the man-made versus nature and geology.’

At Design Miami/ 2014, LS:N Global spotted several designers who drew inspiration from nature and climate change, and explored it through abstract ways. Although Price focused on materials, the resulting pieces remind us of the many Climate Contemplation examples we saw at the show. For more, see our Design Miami/ 2014 design direction.