Public Art
This project kind of came out of the blue, courtesy of the hard work of The National Sculptors’ Guild. The City of Paramount, California commissioned me to scale up this smaller, gallery-sized piece to add some pizzazz to their Progress Plaza at City Hall.
Below are some progress shots of the fabrication process.
Delivered my latest public art piece to the City of Little Rock, Arkansas. I won a national competition to design a sculpture, with the criteria being wide open; they wanted the artists submitting to have free reign to create whatever they could dream up. I’m honored and humbled to have once again worked with the fine folks out there to build something cool to enhance the community.
"Local Color" came about after my discovery of the State Butterfly of Arkansas, the Diana Fritillary. I was intrigued by the startling contrast between the male and female of the species, and the complimentary hues of each. The Diana displays marked Sexual Dimorphism, wherein the sexes have dramatically different size or coloration. The sculpture consists of both forms of the Diana, realized in multiple metals with differing finishes, on opposite sides of a low relief–like a coin with heads and tails. The striking differences give the sculpture a built-in Eureka moment, as well providing a platform for discovering the beauty of Arkansas' natural world.
Below are some shots of the design and proposal for the project.
…and a bunch of photos from the actual fabrication:
Local Color finished - male side
Local Color finished - the female side
Interwoven - INSTALLED!
Ran down to Little Rock on Sunday/Monday with Interwoven in tow. Stayed with new friends Mike and Marty, then got up Tuesday morning and bolted it down to the base. As usual, the City Parks crew were a huge help, and have become some of the best art handlers/installers in the country. I love the bridge as a backdrop: the piece was at least partially inspired by the multiple bridges across the Arkansas river, and their riveted, industrial aura.
See below for some more photos:
Interwoven is finished
After five long months of work through the winter, Interwoven is finally done. Very happy little metal monkey over here. So pleased, in fact, that I composed a wee poem for the occasion:
Interwoven
Unseen fabric
Warp of Time
Weft of Space
The tapestry of connection
Between me and everything
Nexus
Node to node
Emergent consciousness
Synapse
And Synecdoche
Hydrogen becoming
Humanity
A Universe evolving
Eyes
with which to see
Itself
I've been slowed down with the cold and a nice dose of the flu, but I am still plugging away on Interwoven.
Working on the tenth module.
I’m still — slowly — making progress on the Interwoven piece.
The modules are beginning to weave together.
The cutouts where the main body meets the base.
Still working on Interwoven and making good, albeit slow, progress. We had a nice cold snap where the temps dropped down near 0°. Makes the interior of my nice all-concrete shop feel like a meat locker, only colder.
Flipping it over for easier access.
Clamping and using Clecos (temporary rivets) to hold things in place.
Pulling the seam together. Nice Depth of Field!
That’s a LOT of rivets.
More progress on the assembly. Starting to feel like this just might work!
Now that I've bent some tabs, the actual assembly can start. First steps are to figure out which part goes where; I've employed a letter-plus-number system cut right into the metal to try to simplify this process. Seems to be working OK, but ascertaining "front" and "back" on a form without them is somewhat problematic. It's just a matter of playing "who's your neighbor" and keeping track of those relationships. I divided the form up into 13 "modules" consisting of the sheetmetal surrounding each hole. Beyond planning, the actual assembly is aided by the use of these little doodads called "Clecos," which are spring-loaded temporary rivets that hold things in position until actual rivets can be added. Pneumatic riveter for the win. (I "love" "using" "quotes," apparently.)
Using printouts from my 3D model, I’m trying to figure out who goes where.
Lots of rivets. Over 1500.
Clecos are temporary rivets that hold things in place until you can use a real one.
The first half-module is done. This just might work.
This is looking pretty cool.
Look at that caveman go.
Once the virtual model is finalized and I have all the surfaces flattened and laid out, the files are sent off to Wesco Laser to be cut from 14 (main body) and 7 (base) gauge 304 stainless steel. Now I get to try to turn this:
Pile of stainless wanting to be a sculpture.
Into a piece of public art.
Oh, and remember those tabs I talked about? Here they are, ready to be bent and employed to hold the whole works together.
1200 wee tabs, flat, wanting to be bent.
