Sculpture completed: Flying Hulls!

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Tom Harold

I have been waiting forever and a day to post this for you:

Flying Hulls, a rolling ball sculpture customized to the client’s wishes based on a passion for sailing.

I’ve had to sit on this for about two months now! This rolling ball sculpture commission was created as a Christmas gift for a spouse. The two share a passion for sailing, and I was excited about this the moment the client asked, “Can you do something shaped like a sailboat?” Yes! Yes, I can!

Themed pieces can be very challenging, but they also allow me to stretch out and force me to think in different ways. I could immediately imagine designing a frame shaped like a sailboat, and once the client emailed me a photo of their catamaran I knew it would be perfect.

The overall design took careful consideration of the appropriate number, size and shape of the sales as well as the placement of the mast. These are details that I feel are extremely important, as I believe the client will get a greater amount of enjoyment from a work that more closely matches their own vessel. In addition, I curved the outer edges of the sail so that they look as if they are filled with air.

Of course, a catamaran with its sails filled is hardly sitting still. One of the wonderful things the client provided for me as part of my initial research was a video of them on the boat sailing it. I learned from that their practice of “flying hulls,” where the boat only has one of its twin hulls in the water at a time, leaned over from the force of a strong wind, jetting along at speed.

Once I had that image in my head I couldn’t get it out, and the idea of placing the frame of the boat level was just not going to do. I had to make it more dynamic. I had to give it visual motion even as it sat still! I decided I would kick up the frame as I had seen, leaning it up on a single hull. It required a bit more work, yes, but it looks so much better!

I suppose I could go one forever about the creation of it, but I tend to get a little wrapped up in what I do. There were many fun and even frustrating challenges in creating this piece, but it turned out wonderfully, and I was given a wonderful Christmas gift in return: a video of the new owner opening up his present on Christmas day! It was SO cool to see his face as he opened the box!

Now I’ll let you all take a look at it in action! Thanks for reading, and if you do enjoy the video, please give it a thumbs up on Youtube and/or a comment. I greatly appreciate your support!

Invitation and Publication

Posted on November 19, 2014 by Tom Harold

Tom Harold Rolling Ball Sculpture gues post.

The Metal Store published my guest blog post, a brief history of my career with photos and video.

Several weeks back on one of my Facebook groups a post popped up about guest blogging. The writer of the post was looking to create content for a metal supply company’s blog and called for offers from artists. I jumped at the chance. It was a fun way to share a little more about my work and make sure my message was going out to the right crowd.

I wrote an article about my piece Tillander, as I’d just completed it. I sent it off, and the blog manager wrote back and said, “We like it, but do you think you could write more of an introductory piece about yourself, and then we’ll run the other a bit later?” Two articles? Yes!

Today the first article was published. It’s a nice little piece that details my general background from youth up until present day, an examination of the somewhat meandering path that got me to where I am now. It’s all original writing, so you’ll see nothing else like it anywhere on my web site. You can click here for my art career post on The Metal Store’s blog.

I hope you enjoy the post, and thanks for supporting my art!

Tillander – Another Rolling Ball Sculpture Completed!

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Tom Harold

It’s amazing, and it’s finished!!!!

I love to be able to announce that I’ve completed another rolling ball sculpture! There are a lot of feelings that come with finishing a new work: gratitude, happiness, pride, relief, maybe a bit of loss, and I don’t know what all else. That gratitude thing, though, that’s a big one. When I was younger I was often so afraid the finished piece would not be “good enough,” not be perfect, that I never finished it. I didn’t even see my problem for what it was. I’d just get to a point where I was anywhere between 50% and maybe even 90% of the way done with something, and I’d put it down and never quite get back to it.

In my high school art class I got lower grades than I should have simply because a lot of my work was not complete when I handed it in. There were even plenty of projects – art and otherwise – that I never started or took part in because I was afraid my end result would not be good enough. I missed out on a lot that way. The fear of what I perceived as failure was powerful in those days. Eventually, however, I got sick and tired of things, and I desired a change badly enough that I started doing things differently.

That was several years ago, and I still have a good perspective on my old way of (not) doing things versus how I choose to live now. I’ve realized that my perceived ruinous flaws were just poor perspective. I still do the best I can at all times, but now I don’t create impossible standards for myself. Allowing myself to be human allows me to get more work done, which, in turn, allows me to improve even more. Every time I finish a piece of art now it becomes another fabulous and concrete way of physically telling myself, “You’re not living that way anymore. You’ve made changes, and look at how awesome this is!”

Tillander is a wonderful piece of art that stands as further proof that there are big benefits in casting aside a belief in perfectionism. I’m so happy to be scheduling delivery of this piece to my clients! They had the idea to put the air plant terrariums in the sculpture. I thought it was an absolutely kickass idea, so much so that I named the sculpture after the scientist who discovered the plant type. The terrarium idea wound up creating a number of challenges during construction, but I dealt with them one by one, perfectionism be damned, and I think the result really is fantastic. The green of the plants reaching out from inside the twisting, shiny metal really has a wonderful effect, and the round glass spheres of the terrariums complement the curving paths of the marbles perfectly.

Below I present a video of the completed piece. If this piece inspires some thoughts for a rolling ball sculpture that you’d like to commission for your home or office, please click here and send me a message. I’d love to hear your ideas!

Challenging designs

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Tom Harold

Some years back when this blog started, it wasn’t about rolling ball sculpture. It wasn’t even focused chiefly on art! It *was* focused on creativity, and that aspect of it will always be alive and well. Today’s entry is a great example.

This week I had my monthly metalsmith meetup group. It’s a great opportunity to get together with some other artists and swap ideas. Our focus this month was on Design – big “D.” How did we approach design and what sorts of ideas and considerations were part of our design process?

It very often (Maybe all the time?) looks like I just grab some wire, and with total abandon and complete lack of planning, just start a-bendin’ and a-weldin’ and somehow magic happens. In some instances, yeah, I just kind of throw caution to the wind, but lots of times I really am following some sort of plan and working within parameters.

I have one piece in particular which always comes to mind when I think about planning and design, and I brought said piece to the meetup with me. Here is its most basic component:

Maybe not much with just one piece…

I went through a series of months where I was on a self-wrought mission to create one new piece of sculpture a week. Given that I work a day job, that’s a huge challenge, and I had to figure out a way to do things more quickly. I had to come up with new construction techniques and ideas and…designs.

The track section above came to my mind when I tried to think of the simplest, quickest and most efficient way to create track. Actually, I could simplify it a bit more, but I think it would have lost some coolness, so I made this piece! After I made this piece I made:

Many pieces…

So now I had lots of pieces of track. It was so simple it just felt brilliant! It was like a jigsaw puzzle you could put together any way you wanted, and you got a cool image when you were done! (Do they make those puzzles? The should!) I started fitting them this way and that, having fun and getting to literally see what the track was going to do as a completed piece (a fair bit, anyway), before any welding took place. Pretty cool!

Once I’d mocked it up in my head I got down to the hard part and made it reality. Behold, Dropping In:

Add some creativity, a lot of hard work, and voila!

Um, I *might* have lost some simplicity and speed somewhere, because you’ll notice the incredibly cool(!) uprights that I fashioned. Those took a long time to make, involving the measuring, cutting and fitting of lots of little pieces along with a complex welding process to get the three-sided tower completed.

It was a great overall success, however. I made a stunning piece that uses NO curved track AT ALL! It’s the only piece of created to date of that kind. It uses very carefully leveled track so that the marble does not roll too fast, which was not an easy task to accomplish. The results are very pleasing, however, and well worth the effort.

As of the writing of this post, Dropping In is still available. If you’d like to learn more about it and see video of it in action, click here. If you have any questions about it, or would like me to create something along these lines but customized for your particular wants and needs, send me a message here.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to drop back in for more art updates. I appreciate your enthusiasm for my work!

In which I try, and fail (to quit trying).

Posted on October 13, 2014 by Tom Harold

This weekend was to be The Big Weekend. The Big Weekend is Video Weekend. Video Weekend means I finally, finally, FINALLY shoot the video of my newest, bestest, awesomest sculpture commission!

No. (You read the blog, headline, righ? No surprises.)

I did a lot of work to make this happen. As I had been overwhelmed with other work last week, I was really looking forward to this weekend and its abundance of free hours on Friday night, Saturday day and Sunday day to make some magic happen.

Friday night was some art marketing work that needed doing. Done. Saturday I made some good progress, though I allowed my sanity to have its own whole day and I freaked out over not having sufficient and proper lighting. Did you know that light bulbs are colored? White lights, they have color. Photographers know this, which means I know this, but I’ve been able to dodge the issue until now using various tricks or simply by ignoring it. Saturday, however, it was suddenly, disgustingly clear to me that when I put the sculpture under a ceiling halogen and side-lit it with incandescent lights I got an unbearable purple-ish hue all over everything.

Purple. Purpllllllle! Sure, maybe y’all wouldn’t notice, but I would, and I think that you would too anyway, because y’all have eyes. Plus (PLUS!!!), I had to take photos, and THOSE would DEFINITELY show purple. All. Day. Long. For the rest of my life. On my web site. To people. To people for whom I want to actually see my stuff looking nice and cool and fascinating as opposed to, “Why does that look weird? Something’s not right about that one…uh, maybe I should go check my email or look for pictures of puppies playing cards or something…”

So, no, this would do. I had to fix it. How, you ask? Recall my comment about the ceiling halogens. Good, right? And I actually HAD more halogens…on the ceiling. I didn’t see that as a problem. Only some chain and a couple hooks stand between a ceiling light becoming a side light.

Witness my awesomeness:

Trust me, it’ll look like magic when it’s done!

That was super nifty, but there were still details, the last of which was realizing that I needed to add the glass planters. I got them all unpacked, then realized they were horridly fingerprinted. One more thing, but I carefully washed them – oh, they had stickers on them. The stickers would not come off. I had to go find some WD40 to remove the goo. Okay, NOW they were cleaned! At that moment I realized I had to split for a band gig. So close, but Sunday would be gold!

Sunday arrived, I was up early, made it to church, then realized I HAD to get groceries lest I starve the rest o’ the week. Went and got groceries. Brought groceries home. Got all of the groceries put away except for two items. Went to put two items on cupboard shelf positioned above where glass planters were sitting on counter. Hit an almost completely empty bottle of Planters Lightly Salted Peanuts, whereupon the deadly nutty missile launched itself off the shelf and straight onto the counter top, hitting one of the planters, knocking it into the sink, and then…

The pain! The pain!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I refuse to admit defeat. I’ll get it done, and while I’m waiting for the new planter to arrive in the mail, I’m going to get other stuff done. (As my dear mum is fond of saying, “Consider your options.) I shan’t give up! Shall not give up!!!!!

Yes, it takes that long!

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Tom Harold

Sometimes I beat myself up in this whole creation process. The expense of time is something that really gets to me at present, because I don’t have near as much free time to create art as I would like to have. If I work on a project, or even a portion of one, and it takes longer than I think it should, I can be pretty hard on myself about my supposed “poorly managed time.” Most of the time this is totally unreasonable. Actually, maybe it’s always unreasonable.

Today’s post is a perfect example of that. I conceived the basket assembly shown here as a means to keep the marbles from accidentally being dropped onto the glass plant terrarium that will hang near where the marbles are loaded. It was an excellent and attractive solution to the problem. In my head it was very straightforward. It seemed like such a simple solution couldn’t take much time: basket, wires, welding. Two hours, maybe three? No.

I wound up spending hours and hours on it, perhaps six. My first reaction was, “What! How could that take so long! It’s just – it’s just a bunch of semicircles in a frame! That shouldn’t have take so long to do! I should have known better! I must not be working fast enough! How could I let all that time slip by?”

Later I stepped back and did some really quick, really basic math. There are 28 upright pieces forming the sides of the basket. Each of those pieces required on tack weld to hold it in place, so that’s 28 welds right there. Then I had to go back and tack weld them at the other end so that both ends were secure, making 56 welds.

Once everything was tacked and secured, I went back over all of them on both the inside and the outside of the basket using filler wire to create attractive finish welds that would also be completely solid and sturdy, assuring that no amount of vibration from loading the marbles would ever cause one of the welds to break. That makes four additional welds for each “leg.” Four welds times 28 equals 112 more welds. Add that to the tack welds and we have 168 welds.

Two main pieces form the upper lip. Adding those pieces to each other made for at least four more welds, probably six. Now we’re up to 174 welds.

One hundred seventy-four welds. How long does it take to make a single weld? Not too long, a few seconds at most. For many of those welds, however, I didn’t just make the weld. Most of the weld joints were not conveniently positioned. I had to move the sculpture, rotate it one way or another, lay it on its back, turn it upside down, I even had to clamp other pieces of metal onto the sculpture so I’d have a place to rest my hands while welding. That all adds to the build time.

And all of that doesn’t take into account the time I took designing it, bending the wire to the right shape, cutting and fitting all the pieces together. I was really lucky if something fit together on the first try. More often than not I had to grind things to fit just right. More time.

Oh, and cleaning! Let’s not forget the cleaning. That was fun to do after it was all burnt and ugly looking, but it still added time to the build process.

It ended up taking three or four days of available time to complete. Considering all that, well, I didn’t do too badly. Most of the pieces I create for these sculptures are completely individual, even to me. A big part of why I do what I do is the individuality and uniqueness of each piece. It means that certain things are just going to take a long time. The big benefit to all that effort, however, is that not even I can create two works that will be exactly alike. I hope the results speak for themselves.

So I’m going to keep practicing not being so hard on myself, save time where and when I can, and keep working to produce truly unique and special pieces of moving art. How’s that sound?

Challenging myself and new sculpture video for “Dropping In”

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Tom Harold

It has been a tremendously productive past few months, and here is one more result of my decision to create one new piece a week for as long as possible. There’s been a change in plans, but I’ll fill you in on that later. For now, news and video on the new sculpture!

Titled “Dropping In,” I deliberately made an effort to create something different with this one. I’d had a thought around the beginning of the year for a method of creating track that would be rather quick, but also brought with it some limitations. However, limitations always translate into a pattern of thought like this: “Hmmm…I could do that, but that would mean I couldn’t do these other things. Huh. What if I couldn’t do those other things? That seems like a bad thing, but it just means I have to find another way of reaching my goal. If I can’t do X, then…then the challenge is to find a Y that will resolve the issue, and quite possibly be awesome in the process!”

This line of thinking worked its way around in my head for a while. Then “Lunar Walk” showed up on my work bench piece by piece, and I realized it was time to play around with some of those ideas. Turns out they worked pretty well! The sculpture looks really cool and is different from what you very often see with rolling ball sculpture. I enjoyed building it and its function. Even better, when other people got a look at it, they liked it as well. Success!

Once that piece was done I was ready to engage in my idea 100%. I was going to make a bunch of perfectly straight track sections in a whole batch and then…well, I didn’t know what, but there was only one way to find out!

Turns out it really was a challenge. Curves create a certain type of feel. They also allow for gradual changes in depth and speed. I was losing a lot of advantages in some areas, but it just made me more determined to figure out something cool with my idea.

I suppose I could have made my track sections bowed or wavy, but I really wanted to go with the idea of making this piece with nothing but straight, flat track. I could see something in my head that really wanted to take shape. Once I started laying the completed track sections out on the work bench, things really began clicking. The “steps” portion of the sculpture just seemed too perfect, and I was getting excited about the bigger challenge of keeping the track only gradually sloped so that the marble wouldn’t roll too quickly. Anyone who builds RBS will tell you that controlling roll speed at a slow pace is difficult!

When the basic track route was laid out I started welding some of the pieces together. I had no specific frame in mind, but once I started looking at the steps taking shape it snapped in place: strutted uprights! I immediately thought, “Oh, man, now you’ve done it. That’s going to take a LOT more time!” Remember, I was trying to get this piece done within one week. Just building one upright with struts is time-consuming, but here I had the idea for a triangulated piece. That was going to take even more than triple the time it took to make a single-sided one! Nevertheless, I knew the idea was perfect. I couldn’t NOT build it after having seen it in my head.

Hours of work followed. The uprights turned out great, but required a good deal of patience in setup and welding to keep them from warping horribly. The track worked with the frame visually even better than I could have hoped! Keeping the track sections slanted at just the right angle took additional patience and lots of adjustment, but once I had it working it was right on.

I’m very pleased with the end result on this one. I imagine that it is not to the taste of everyone, but I appreciate its uniqueness, and I’m sure there is someone else that feels this one is just right for them. I was also struck with the idea that the open area in the sculpture could be used as a mounting point for an award or a photograph that I could add at the client’s request. I know if I worked somewhere, say an engineering firm, and I was given this piece of art with a plaque affixed to it, I’d be a lot happier than if I got the usual brass and wood plaque from a trophy shop. This is one to remember! Plus, every single person coming in the office would want to play with it! How many other trophies can do that?

As mentioned earlier, my goal has been one new piece a week for several month’s worth of time. I have just received two new sculpture commissions, both of which have me extremely excited! These are larger works that will take some time to complete, so the small pieces will be on hold for a while, but I will continue to update here with other news as I have it.

Thanks to everyone who supports my work. I appreciate your efforts in forwarding my videos and putting up comments on various internet outlets. You help me do bigger and better things!

New Sculpture Video: “The Good Bean” National Kidney Foundation Fundraiser

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Tom Harold

I’ve had my shoulder up against things, pushing to get work accomplished, and I have more to show for it! Here we have another super-cool video of a great piece I did as part of a fundraiser for the National Kidney Foundation. It’s called “The Good Bean” (lots of health professionals refer to kidneys in slang as “beans,” so there ya go!), and the frame is shaped to mimic the NKF’s logo.

You always want to produce something that is going to please people, make them happy and proud to be the caretaker of your work. Smaller sculptures can sometimes be a challenge, just because they are brief, and you can’t do things like broad, sweeping curves or extremely tall coils and the like. I wanted to come up with a little something that would set this one off and make it unique.

The answer came in the form of the widening track drop-through, the part where the marble rolls out to the end of the straight piece of track, and just when you think it’s going to shoot right off the end, it slips between the rails and drops down onto the track below it. This can be a very tough element to get functioning properly, as it’s all about the tolerances, and as I’ve mentioned before, marbles are neither round nor the same size. Since I was working with a single marble, this suddenly made the whole deal a lot easier, and I knew this element would be the perfect highlight for “The Good Bean.”

Not to neglect the rest of the sculpture, I created some very nice curves plus a pretty darn large spiral that took ten feet of wire to create. The end result is a really fabulous desktop piece. The woman who won the contest is very happy to have received it, and I’m glad it went to someone who will get lots of enjoyment out of it.

Check out the video below to get the real effect. Please feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss a piece for yourself. I’d be happy to discuss the possibilities.

“Lunar Walk” new sculpture completed with video!

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Tom Harold

It has been a very full day for yours truly, but the sculpture video must be posted before another moment passes! Especially this one, because it is a bit of a departure for me in some ways. You’ll see what I mean, and I’m sure you’re going to check it out!

I have been trying to keep the price of this series of sculptures right around $200, but Lunar Walk just begged for a little extra treatment, and I had to do it right. It’s slightly higher at $300, but still a very reasonable office piece and well worth all the effort I put into it. Do you know anyone else who has something like this? No! And you very likely won’t anytime soon either. Now how cool is that?

I’ll let the video speak for itself. I do hope you enjoy it. I loved the creative stretching this piece afforded me. Oh, and take special note of that crescent moon frame as well as the relaxed pace of the action, both characteristics for which this piece was named.

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Two new sculpture videos! “Emerging” and “Trio.”

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Tom Harold

I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to keep up on the posts, but I’m improving! I actually didn’t realize I’d missed last week’s, so you get TWO this week! How cool is that? (Answer: Extremely!)

“Emerging” is a great little piece that has two spirals plus a fantastic coil. The frame on this piece is a particular favorite accent of mine, and I would not be at all surprised to see something similar show up on future pieces (hint!). This piece was priced at $200, a range I’m trying to maintain for this whole series of smaller pieces. Someone already likes it enough to have made it a permanent part of their home.

My most recent piece is “Trio,” a complete devotion to the ever-popular track element, the spiral. Giving it its name are three spirals of varying sizes. It has that wonderful hypnotic effect that somehow straddles the line between calming and energetic. This one is also priced at $200, and as of this writing still available. You may purchase it through my web site, www.tomharold.com.

Thanks again to those who continue to check in on my work and offer support! Assistance is always greatly appreciated in the form of forwarding my videos to anyone you feel may enjoy my work, as well as comments, and Likes. It means a lot!

Tom Harold

Writing on creativity and rolling ball sculpture

Author Archives: Tom Harold