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I do so love these. Anyone who has been hanging around here for a while knows that I love these things. Rolling ball sculptures. They’re pointless. You put a marble at the top, and it rolls down to the bottom. It doesn’t accomplish anything useful, not in that “We have work to do! Money must be made! Mountains must be leveled! Paper must be shredded!” However, they’re just friggin’ fun as all get out.
I haven’t done a lot of work with these lately. Seems like RBS building and reading have taken a back seat recently. I afforded time for this one a few weeks ago, however, during the Masterpiece in a Day event, which, I just realized, I never did fully devote an entry to, so you’ve not seen this thing until now! My apologies. I’m sure you were all chomping at the bit.
Any rate, here it is! It looks a little different than it did on the day of the event. I spent the evening tweaking it. I recurved the legs so that they sweep in toward the base more. This makes it look a little more groovy, plus the base I’m going to make for it will be able to be cut smaller. I also fixed one major support issue. When I first built it the thing was very wobbly. After looking at it for a while and playing with it, I realized it would benefit from one support piece in a strategic place. I made one up and installed it. You can’t even really see it in this photo, but it reaches from the bottom of the first spiral down to the very beginning of the third spiral.
What really surprised me was just how much of a difference this made. I mean, I knew it would help, but had no idea how much! It stands about as solid as any frame of copper could possibly do, even better than I could have planned. I should have been an engineer, you know it? Friggin’ architect. Look at that thing!
Well, it’s base-makin’ time for this bad boy. Since I basically threw it together in six hours, and it’s missing a lot of the refinements of one of my usual pieces, this one is going straight to my 3-year-old nephew. He’ll think it’s cool, and I won’t lay awake at night wondering what someone will think of it.
Pretty neat man. And it’s not pointless! How else are rolling balls supposed to roll if you don’t give them something to roll around on? You’ve completed their life’s purpose!
Yes, you’re so right. I forgot about that.
This reminds me of what people ask sometimes: “What does it do?”
Answer: “You watch it. It looks cool.”
Some people get that, just GET it, and they love it. If not, they kind of shrug their shoulders and walk away.
There’s this idea that art, even pictures, is supposed to really DO something, like perform a function (as is the case in prints you buy to fill your wall space). Art pretty much is just *there*, and you do whatever you like with it. It doesn’t necessarily have any other purpose than that. We sort of forget that somewhere along the way.
Wow! I’m still registering that it’s you who makes these beautiful things!how do you get them to be so ..straight? And they’re kinda complicated, you work to a self-drawn paper model first?
Thanks, Bellax. They’re so much fun to build! Glad you like them.
Getting the wires straight is accomplished with a lot of patience and persistence. Building spirals is actually not quite so hard (unless I make them REALLY big!) because I can bend the wire around a piece of pipe, flower pot, or a funnel. See those two pieces of white pipe in the background? I used those to shape most of the spirals on this particular sculpture. It starts as a coil, and then I bend it by hand until I get it into the sort of spiral that I want. For long, straight stretches or more complicated curves, well, I just have to be patient and do it any way that I can.
For some of them I have drawn out designs beforehand, but I find out that I often change the design as I go depending on any number of things that might come up during construction. Sometimes I’ll just realize that what I’ve drawn on paper just isn’t going to look or work right in real life, and I’ll change it.
Thanks for stopping in to check things out!
Heh, yeah, I was kinda wondering about the whole background.. Good to know :Dagain, these sculptures are very, very pretty. Good job. 🙂