Well, it wasn’t the whole night, but it felt like it constituted the bulk of my activity for last evening, so there ya go.
I told myself once again that I was going to dedicate one hour of my evening to doing sculpture. This program seems to be producing results, so I’m sticking with it. Yestereve (it’s not a word, but, eh…) I had gotten two coils bent and gotten most of one spiral formed. Last night it was dauntingly simple: make more spirals. The plain simple obviousness of what needs to be done, the real work rather than the planning or figuring or talking about it feels intimidating, but I went back to the prayers from the day before, and I was on my way.
After only an hour of work I had this:
Woohoo! Sweet! Five spirals of varying sizes. They look nifty, don’t they? I think they turned out quite nicely, if I do say so my humble self. I tested a marble on all of them, and it looks like they’ll serve pretty well just the way they are, although some minor tweaking will likely result during the rest of the build. The exit ramps are a bit touchy for me as well, but I’ll have time to fuss with that later.
It’s incredibly satsifying to be able to crank out some complete sections like this in one sitting. A lot of RBS building involves gradually piecing together sections over a period of time, sections and elements that can’t be tested or used until a certain point is reached. It can feel like no progress is being made. Last night it was easy to see the progress in my work. I value those moments. Perhaps I’ll come back and read this entry some time when I’m knee-deep in soldering together support braces or some similarly necessary yet time-sucking and not so fun task.
My big issue now is I’m not sure how to integrate the spirals as a whole. I’ve come up with a couple of different ideas, but not I’m not married to one or the other just yet. They kind of look like little flower blooms, don’t they? Hmmm… Stay tuned, it’s getting interesting!
Neat! Do you listen to music while you work? What do you listen to and do you find that it effects the sculpture? (holding a microphone out to you. Pretend you’re being interviewed for the news, and give a most gripping report. Then scream “Elvis lives!” for no reason.)
That was a fun night. I worked on it again last night, but the results, while totally necessary and satisfying in their quality and outcome, don’t look like jack in a photo. Maybe I should represent that with a pic some time. There are so many little parts to any project that are absolutely vital, yet don’t look at all impressive. All that crap on those chopper shows? The real work is in measuring and cutting and configuring. The part where they put it all together? That’s about 10% of the work.
I do listen to music while I work, and it’s a little tough with the new work area, because there’s no radio or stereo down there. My house is small, so last night I put in my (brand new!) She and Him CD in the stereo directly upstairs and just listened to it through the floor. I’m trying to figure out how to fix the problem without spending money, but I don’t have a solution yet.
I think I’ll save the more detailed response for another blog post. It’s a great question, and I can write about it at length. I should start adding a footer at every sculpture post stating what I was listening to at the time.
Elvis lives!
Good work, Tom, glad to hear the time thing is working out for you. I have started doing somethigng similar at the gym and find it really works well. Rather than saying “I have to do 12 reps of this thing I hate”; I now say “I have to do as many as I can in 45 seconds” . I think the end result is better, and I don’t find myself trying to figure out if I can get out of doing that last rep. OK, well, I ‘m just getting used to the working out thing, but you get the picture.