Garrett Borden Topo

When we received the assignment I really wanted to be creative with it. In eighth grade I had to do the same project but was required to use cardboard. I felt like that was the obvious solution for this project, so I wanted to think out of the box and do something unexpected. I figured I would recreate the land out of just that, land. I initially wanted to use dirt, but I found that was difficult to acquire. I decided potting soil would be an acceptable substitute. I needed something with sides, and a reasonable size so that I could transport it easily. When I bought the potting soil, I also bought a tupperware container. It was clear so thought it would be interesting to put it inside of that so you could see it through the sides. I found it was too difficult to work vertically onto the piece so I decided to use the lid of the tupperware container. The shallow sides kept the dirt in, and it was the right size. It also did not look cheap, and didn't appear to take away from the topographical map.

According to my calculations, the proportions meant that each layer of the map I was constructing should have been a half centimeter. I started by constructing the map layer by layer, each layer being a half cm and in the corresponding shape. I used my hands and spoons to do this. I got to about the eighth layer when I found that the lines of the topographical map were too close together to do this reasonably, so then I mounded the dirt on itself until it was the proper height in all the areas then I carved it away and pressed it, using a spray bottle to make it more malleable. This was very tedious and the potting soil was very fragile. After a lot of patience I got all of the details, perfectly measured, translated in the mounds of dirt, including the 5cm deep canyon, 10cm high mountains, and 8.5 cm ridge along with all of the other features. I thought the piece was fragile, since when it was when I was working on it, but when I went to destroy it, I had to work pretty hard to break it.