Triad
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This sculpture, Triad, has been in our yard for more than 50 years. It was surprisingly less Triad-like after being hit with a tree, which snapped the topmost mirror welds off the base, and cracked all three of the mirror glasses.
Gerald Louis Morin is the artist.
From the previous owners, who purchased this piece and originally installed it:
it is an elegant piece and worked well where it was positioned as you could view the overhead clouds from the living room or patio. Stars too and sometimes the moon. The third (top) piece had a sleeve attached/welded to the back of it(also up at the fence line on the ground). The sleeve when welded to the upper piece fitted over the protrusion on the rear of the base and the sleeve slipped over the protrusion. The alignment is critical for the upper mirror to align with the two lower mirrors. I’m sure you noticed the thickness of mirrors. I don’t know if that is very important to duplicate.
The refinishing is important. Lots of work. They were originally painted in an automobile paint shop with an enamel for outdoor use. The remaining finish is original …50 + years.
procedure
- Weld the third mirror post back on
- Repair welds on the mirror backs
- Strip, sand, and paint the frame, many coats of paint
- Cement neoprene rubber backing (0.125“) to the metal shells as a mirror backing
- Install new mirror glass in the metal shells
- Install on original concrete pad, which was carefully aligned to reflect the sun into the residence at particular times of day
I installed the piece today (20 Oct 2024). It’s great to have it in place again, but we have a problem with the compatibility between the mirror silvering and the mastic used to secure the mirrors to the neoprene rubber backing. This is very unfortunate, since it will ultimately require me to remove all the mirrors (destructively) and replace them.
I plan to replace the mirrors with titanium plate, polished to a mirror finish. If this doesn’t work out for some reason, I’ll use aluminum plate, likewise polished to a mirror finish. The polished metal will be less-perfectly reflective, of course, but also far more durable, and a dirty mirror isn’t that much different than a mirror-polished piece of metal (and these are always dirty, since they’re outside, uncovered).
- Mirror glass is incredibly fickle. The silvering is fragile, the edges delicate.
- Spread out the cement with a paddle or a roller when you adhere the urethane to the metal, and again when you adhere the mirror to the urethane. You don’t want blobs of cement, even if they do flatten, because they can put uneven pressure on the mirror silvering and cause it to delaminate.
- The stripping took a long time. The best pads were the fiber pads on an angle grinder. The worst was the steel rope cup pad, which almost took off more than one of our appendages. Just use the fiber pads, and buy a couple 10-packs, so you can swap them out when needed easily.
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