The next step for our coil evolution - making them heftier and more resilient to studio and composing wear and tear. Without losing the linear drawing in space feel, we also want to make them more sculptural.

Bathroom/window sealant became our medium for cores. We tried several. The one we went with cured the fastest, retained a nice rubbery feel and was the strongest when tugged on.

Up to now, the coils have stayed on one plane, fabricated and dried on a flat table top. When we used them in compositions, we liked that when they were under load they lost their flatness and twisted into 3 dimensions.

We decided to make them 3 dimensional from the get go. Recently, we had some bright white rope piled on a work table. We wondered how we might make a coil act more rope-like and loop about in space.

Carving grooves in pink insulation foam board to cast coil designs seems clever, but impractical.

Our next idea is to use strips of aluminum flashing held in position with kebab skewers. They may have a miniature race track feel to them, but they work really well.

We use a lot of hidden wire, velcro, tape and nails to attach our paper objects to each other, but we don't like hiding things. We prefer making connectors part of the work.

So we rolled overbeaten abaca into coils and figured out how to cast them into linear forms. An attractive length of stiff abaca "rope" seemed useful for cobbling things together.