LADPW Visitor Center
Lone Pine, California

 

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This project was probably the largest piece of work to ever take place in my studio.. It was yet another job subbed through Color-Ad, Inc. and took more than a year to get together and a solid four months to complete my part of the job.

It will be hard to tell from the pics, (it BARELY fit in my studio) but the piece is a 3-D topo map of about two-thirds of the state of California (cut down the middle of the San Jaquin valley) with Los Angeles on one side and Las Vegas on the other.

The purpose of the map was to show the various water and power sources for the city of L.A. with an extremely exaggerated verical scale. The overall actual size of the piece was approximately 16 feet long x 10 feet wide x 8 inches high. We made it break into three pieces for transport.

Color-Ad, Inc. roughed out the topo in three sections using a CNC router on three inch thick sign foam (stacked where necessary) with 3/4 poplar sides. I then smoothed out the rough edges and filled in voids. I made the seams "seamless" and topcoated the entire piece with a tough urethane called Styro-spray. I then primed and painted the surface using vinyl-acrylics based on an approved satelite image. I then hand-painted all the systems (roads, powerlines, aqueducts, rivers, etc).

This was just my part of the gig. Color-Ad, Inc, then added all kinds of labels and fiber optics and installed it in the Interagency Visitor Center in Lone Pine, California.

 

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The top of the map looking south down the snow-capped Sierra Nevada.
Lake Tahoe is the water feature in the foreground.

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The top of the map looking south down the San Jaquin valley.

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Lookiing south over Los Angeles.

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Looking east across the Mohave desert to Las Vegas.
The red lines represent power lines from Lake Meade.
The blue lines represent aqueducts and
the gray lines represent roads.

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Looking east across the Mohave desert .
Bakersfield is in the foreground.

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