I’ve had my mind on the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis for quite some time.  They have a rolling ball sculpture there that was the genesis for all my sculpture madness at present, plus they have an exhibit on vintage comic books.  One or the other alone would have gotten me out of the house, but with both it was a sure thing that somewhere in this twelve weeks that is The Artist’s Way I would have found a way to make it there for an Artist Date.

When you first step into the main part of the Children’s Museum, you come face to face with this enormous art glass sculpture.  At 43 feet, the sheer size of it is impressive.  It’s the largest permanent installation of blown glass anywhere.  My friend works at the museum, and I joked with her once about how they clean the thing.  She replied rather seriously, “Oh, they have a crew that comes in and does it regularly.”

It weighs 18,000 pounds, and took over 14 days to install 4,800 pieces of glass to build it.  You can get some idea of the intricacy of the whole thing with this closeup.  An assembly photo at the site showed the blown glass pieces being slide onto metal stakes that protruded from a central metal column.  The scope of this project is astounding – makes me want to try something!  (Um, like maybe carving sixty pumpkins for Halloween?)

I’ve mentioned this in previous blogs, but my current (and quite possibly eternal) fascination with rolling ball sculpture was sparked by a trip I made to the Children’s Museum about five or so years ago.  I went with my nieces and their mom, my older sister.  It was really just a trip to have fun.  I didn’t have anything in mind, except I always personally liked the science exhibit.  My niece Abby was extremely excited that “We’re gonna make a boat!”  The boat turned out to be a few pieces of that styrofoam like they use for meat packing trays, and we taped it together with some straws.  I admire the mind of a child for thrilling in such simple pleasures.  Honestly, she made it seemed like we were about to construct a battle cruiser with working weaponry and a functional engine room. 

When we entered the area of battleship/foam raft construction my eyes came upon one of the most fantastic things I’d ever seen in my entire life:

The George Rhoads rolling ball sculpture, Science in Motion.  Incidentally, you won’t find any of that information readily available anywhere near the exhibit itself.  There is this:

But you have to look for that to find it.  I didn’t even notice it, and the sign next to the exhibit says that it’s a “Rube Goldberg ball machine” or something like that, and that it’s in operation thanks to…individuals or some company which escapes me.  I was actually bummed that it didn’t mention George or any of his other work.  That befuddles me somewhat.  He’s a pretty well-known kinetic sculptor.  (I found out what I know about it by doing multiple internet searches, and finally exchanging emails with one of Rhoads’ staff members.)

Be that as it may, at the time I wasn’t concerned quite so much with its origin.  I was more amazed that such a thing actually existed.  I hadn’t seen anything like it in recent memory, and it just reached out and grabbed 100% of my attention.  There was so much to it that appealed to me: 

1. Its inherent sense of fun and playfulness.  It said, “Behold!  I am a machine upon which much time was spent in construction so that I may perform the extremely important task of…being entertaining!  Woohoo, I am a machine for fun!  Watch me!  Play with me!”  Children need no encouragement whatsoever to grab and twist the knob that imparts action onto the long, pale blue screw lift for this portion of the sculpture.

2. The fact that such great care and attention to detail went into it.  Bending the wire alone had to have taken much patience and forethought.  Add to that the fact that certain moving elements of the sculpture required their own specific exacting calculations.  In the picture above, for instance, you can see a green wire basket to the left.  Notice the ball falling into it?  Notice also that there is a metal pad at the lower middle of the frame.  The ball has just finished leaving the track, bounced (with a fabulous *gong!* I might add) off of that square purple pad, and landed perfectly inside the wire basket.  Who spent time figuring all that out?!?!  To catch a moving ball?!  Brilliant!

3. The creativity.  Look below at the number of different elements the sculpture employs.  This sculpture is not just about balls rolling here and there on some fancifully bent rails.  Numerous different devices were created to manipulate the billiards in interesting ways.

A. Bell-ringing tipper arm: At the back of the sculpture you see the yellow bell.  Swinging away from it is a mallet on an arm, and at the top of the mallet arm we see that there is a billiard being carried from an upper track to a lower track by the arm.  Once it reaches the lower track it will fall free, the arm will swing back, and the bell will be rung.  A serious bell-ringing apparatus!

B. Ball-collecting tipping arm: As the billiards come in on the track at the upper left they fill a catchrail that is balanced so that it points upward on its fulcrum.  Once enough balls collect on the catchrail, however, the arm tips downward, emptying all five balls at once onto a lower track.  The result is a delightful train effect of balls chasing each other down the track.

C. Corkscrew: The balls chase each other from the catchrail and race down this corkscrew in a visual and auditory flurry.  Colors and noise!  Bring it!

D1. Music and Motion, Chimes: Here a set of flat, tuned metal chimes are suspended so that they form the base of the track for the balls.  If you look toward the right you can make out the blurred ball racing over them, and you’ll notice the chimes are hanging at angles as they are rung during its passage over them.

D2. Music and Motion, Wood Blocks: Here you can just make out a white billiard tripping the first of three forks that protrude up between the track rails into the path of the ball.  As a fork is pushed down, the sounding arm rocks back, after which it most naturally swings back and gives the wood block a satisfying little *thock*!  The mallet heads on the end of the sound arm?  Golf balls.  I love the use of so many different objects!

E. Interacivity: In both photos above you can see how portions of the sculpture can be manipulated by viewers.  In the first one a girl raises a ball that is caged in a chute of stout metal bars.  The billiards collect at the bottom, and they will not continue along that portion of the sculpture unless they are moved by hand.  Children have a great time lifting them to the next level and sending them on their way.

In the second photo there is a tilting green lift that is operated by a knob turned by hand.  As shown here the knob is being turned by a young boy and the lift has reached its full height and is realeasing a ball onto the track above it.

F. Displayed laws of physics: Newton’s law of motion is shown here.  Three balls remain at rest on this particular dip in the track.  When a new ball comes along at the left it smacks the other three, and the one to the right takes off, sending another ball along, but always leaving three behind.

F2. Motion and rest: This one is a harder to see, but in the rectangle there are no downward angles.  All rolling surfaces are tracks, though the corners have angled pieces to encourage a rolling ball to continue its journey.  The balls enter at the top and are forced to go either right or left by a wedge placed below the point of entry, and they zig-zag their way from the end to the middle where they drop down to the next level.  They don’t have a lot of momentum, so sometimes they end up coming to rest as you see two of them doing in the lower right corner.  Eventually one ball will come along that will have enough juice that it will smack a few around and send them down.  It’s a little unnerving to watch, because you want them all to go RIGHT NOW!  Doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid.  It’s a bit of lazy motion on this one, and patience is required.

G. Active track splitters: There are a number of active splitters on the track, and this pendulum is a very simple one.  One moving part.  Balls come along often enough that they keep the pendulum swinging.  It has a post at its top center point, seen just to the left of the arriving ball in this photo.  This ball will be prevented from rolling to the left by the post, and when the pendulum swings back it will tilt over and roll the ball to the left.

H. Track splitters without moving parts: How can you possibly make a ball choose a right or left course without using some machinery to guide it?  When the balls fall from the upper track, they aren’t forced to go one way or another.  The landing area is basically flat.  When the balls fall down they run into each other and are forced to go one direction or the other without employing any outside forces to direct them along a certain path.  Here you can see the striped ball is being forced off to the right by the presence of the green one already sitting below it.  I like this trick in particular, as it induces an action without adding any more machinery to the sculpture itself, simplicity of design in action.

I. Automation: I’m a gearhead for certain.  Nothing like having a little electrical motor powering up a chain lift!  The sculpture contains two separate runs, each with multiple tracks.  This run is completely motor-driven, so it will continue with its operation even if no one is around.  Its motion attracts people who can then activate the hand-powered run.

J. Track Variety: Not all of the track is made up of steel rail.  This portion incorporates pieces of metal U-channel down which the ball drops.  Not only is it fun to watch it change direction at sharp angles, there’s also plenty of thunking going on as it drops from one section to the next.

Here is a final end view of the sculpture.  It’s fully encased by plexiglass, which is a good thing, because kids pretty much just want to bang on it when they see it, which you gotta take as a good sign.  If they gave it the once over and walked away?  Not so good.  It’s nice to see people want to be a part of what they are seeing, even if it’s along the lines of “Hey!  Move!  Go!”  There was plenty of laughing, giggling, ogling and grabbing going on at the Rhoads sculpture. 

I just basically stared at it for over an hour.  I’m very grateful that such a source of inspiration is so readily available to me.  Even though some of the mystery was gone compared to the first time I saw it (now I know how some of the designs are accomplished), that doesn’t mean I enjoyed it any less.  I took away another completely new set of experiences that will surely provide inspiration and motivation for my future sculpting efforts.  I so can’t wait to get another one completed!

There was still some time left before the museum closed, so I headed over to the comics exhibit.  Along the way I swung by the merry-go-round and snapped some pics using a slow shutter speed.

I used to love to ride on this thing when I was a kid.  It used to be outside at a park that is not far from my house.  For many years there was a ring of concrete still in place at the park marking where it had been years ago.  I’m amazed that it survived and could be restored years later.  It makes me a little wistful for times past.  My dad has told me on a number of occasions about various amusment parks that used to be around the city.  We had roller coasters, boat rides, carousels.  He even has a few old photographs of some of the rides before they were torn down.  Kind of sad that we don’t have them anymore.  My city has obviously gone through many changes in its lifetime.

I had to stop off at the comics exhibit, seeing as how I spent a short period of time collecting them in grade school.  I was an X-Men fan, but you cannot deny the allure of a superhero of any stripe.  Since I’ve started fooling around with drawing again, I’m also interested in the art aspect of things.

Batman’s Batmobile has changed markedly over the years.  Personally, I’ve always been fond of the original, seeing as how it was a Barris custom creating, and I believe morphed from what was originally a Ford Thunderbird.  If memory serves, it was put on the dragstrip once, and it had so much metal in it from the customizing procedures, it managed a rather miserable elapsed time.  Guess that’s why the rocket was added in back.  My favorite feature on this latest edition is the set of Hoosier front tires.  That’s right, the Caped Crusader rides on tires straight outta the Heartland.

It’s the real cape!  The real one from the TV show!!!  Sweet!  If I put this thing on, I’d have to try and scale a wall or right some sort of wrongdoing.  Maybe I’d just hang out in the Batcave and let the Boy Wonder handle the tough stuff.

Unforunately, I arrived late, and they were shutting off the light tables for the Draw a Superhero activity.  No way!  I wanted to draw!  Oh well, maybe next time. 

The Artist’s Way talks about the need to “refill the well” of creativity by experiencing new things to spark your imagination.  Thanks to this trip, I certainly have a store of things to draw from the next time I sit down to create.