Rolling ball sculpture is a fascinating, complex and relatively new art form. Currently, there are a number of outlets on the web from which one can mine information about it, but it is largely technical in nature. I have realized that the creators, the ones who breathe life into this wonderful form of kinetic expression, are often left in the shadows, information on them being provided only by a few scant “About Me” descriptions on web pages or random web posts. I have decided to do something about this lack of information, to shine some light on these wonderful creators, and in the process, to provide the world with a fuller view of the magnificent art of rolling ball sculpture.

To that end, I am pleased and excited to present you with the first in a series of interviews I will be publishing featuring highly talented rolling ball sculpture artists. Far more than simple “How’d you make that?” FAQs, these interviews will focus on each artist’s backgrounds, and their different abilities and experiences that have led them to this unique and captivating creative outlet.  Yes, there will be technical information shared – I won’t go without missing that opportunity – but an equally valuable opportunity will be seized to present the artists and their art in as full a capacity as possible. The aim is to broaden the recognition and understanding of the artists and the art form itself. It’s a first of its kind literary and artistic project for rolling ball sculpture, and it’s going to be great stuff! There will be a new interview posted on the third Thursday of the month.

Our inaugural interview is with accomplished and skilled RBS artist Stephen Jendro. Stephen credits a childhood gift from an uncle with igniting his fascination with rolling ball sculpture. He has traveled the world, worked with rockets, owns 80 birds, and considers singer/songwriter Todd Snyder to be an important tool in the work shop. But how does this add up to amazing kinetic art? Read on to find out!

TH: Where are you from?

SJ: Carnation Washington, about 20 mi east of Seattle where Carnation sweetened condensed milk comes from. I was born in southern CA and then the family moved to New Zealand and then Australia when I was a kid. Then I came back to southern California. So I was educated in the British schooling system, but I’m an American.

 

TH: What were your big interests when you were younger?

SJ: Plastic train tracks when I was two. When I was four I got an Erector set. I remember building a Ferris wheel when I was four. I remember that once I realized the nuts went on the bolts, it was amazing. You could connect stuff! And then Lego, lots of Lego and slot car sets. Things with tracks and motors and kineticism, lots of slot car tracks. Later, a lot of skateboarding. When I think about all the skateboarding I did, I realize that I was the marble!

 

TH: Did you have any schooling in the arts?

SJ: No. A friend called me “autodidactic.” I got out of high school and went straight to work, and I’m self taught on everything.

 

TH: What is your day job?

SJ: I’ve been at Microsoft for 15 years as a web site manager and web site producer.

 

TH: When did you first discover rolling ball sculpture?

SJ: When I was ten my uncle brought home a brass rod rolling ball sculpture that I think he got in San Francisco. That was a good place for that kind of art in the 70s. It had one-inch steel balls, and I played with it way more than any normal child would play with it. And here we are forty years later, and I can still remember – I could build that thing from memory, and as a matter of fact, I might build that thing from memory yet.

 

TH: Do you know who built it?

SJ: No, I’ve tried and tried. If I had to guess I’d say it was a Stan Bennett. I do remember that it was brass or bronze rod, and it had a name on it, but it had little people – little weld-dots out of leftover pieces of rod, a blob for the head and blobs for the hands. They were just stuck on there. But I have no idea who really did it.

 

TH: What do you recall really drew you to that sculpture?

SJ: I could tell at ten years old that this took a lot of time to make. It had a lot of connecting pieces. It was compact. It was a foot square by maybe three feet tall. And that somebody would spend that much time and effort making something that A, made me that happy, and B, had no practical application, to me that was a homerun.

 

TH: When did you build your first one?

SJ: My first rolling ball sculpture was in 1997? Maybe 1996. I think that’s right.

 

TH: What prompted you to build it?

SJ: Prior to that in 1990 I was living in southern California, working for Hercules Aerospace on the Titan IVB rocket program at Edwards AFB. It was an hour to work and an hour back, and the entire drive there’s nothing but Joshua trees, and Joshua trees are these really pretty cactus trees that have these really pointy fronds on them. For some reason, one day after seeing my ten-millionth Joshua tree I got this idea in my head that wouldn’t go away, and that idea was, “I bet I could build one of those out of metal.”

And so I did, and it was awful. It was so awful, in order to improve it I put light bulbs on it. And so it went from awful to horrible, so I gave it to a neighbor friend who loved it. But the real important thing about that is I learned how to sweat copper pipe together. And I bought eighth-inch copper rod in order to replicate the fronds, and it was the fortuitousness of buying eighth-inch copper rod for the fronds.

I kept thinking about it. The lamp was actually quite a setback, and my muse ran away from me for a while, but it kept just sitting there, like Chinese water torture, just drip, drip, drip, drip, drip. A couple of years go by, and I am still thinking about these things, but the internet came along in the mid-90s, and there was a search engine sitting there staring at me, and I started using search terms to try and find what I had seen as a kid.

Also, I saw in San Francisco at Pier-something as a teen – in 1979 I went there, and there was a shop and they had some of these ceiling-mounted rolling ball sculptures. I knew exactly what they were, because I’d seen one when I was 10, 11 and twelve. I pointed to them and I talked to the guy for a little bit. I think I was sixteen at the time. I said, “Boy I think I’d like to make those,” and he said, “Well, you should,” and I said – then I got kind of negative, because it’s a little daunting – and I said, “But I don’t want to build something that’s already done.” The guy looked at me and he said, “No, you won’t be copying anybody. It will be different, because it will be something you made,” and that stuck with me for a very long time.

So I was thinking about those ones that I saw in San Francisco and the lamp that I made. The internet came along and gave me the opportunity to do research. When I started using some search terms around rolling ball sculpture – I don’t know if it was ‘kinetic art’ or ‘marble art’ – I came across an article by Mark Olejarczyk, the one he wrote on Jeffrey Zachmann that was on the “singing lemur” site [Ed note: The interview no longer exists at the named site.] and I read that article and it was like, “Wow.” This is when Jeff was doing what looked like brass or bronze and stainless, his early stuff. I saw that, and I said, “Oh, I’m doing that. I’m starting.”

I went, and I knew exactly where to get the copper rod, and I knew how to sweat pipe together. I got some 5/8” steel ball bearings from a ball bearings house. I just got some really basic stuff together. I didn’t spend a lot of money on it. I was dipping my toes in the water. The outlay was maybe a hundred bucks. I built that first one, I got one rail into it, and I went, “I can do this. I don’t like what I’m seeing, because it’s copper and I want to aim at what Jeff is doing or better, because that’s in my mind’s eye.” So I put that aside and saved up money and researched it and researched it and researched it and actually wrote to Jeff and he provided a lot of great information and I got going with stainless steel.

TH: What year was the tree?

SJ: I’m thinking that was ’92 or ’94. First copper piece was ’96 or ’97.

 

TH: Did that first rolling ball piece ever did get finished?

SJ: No. I happily dismantled that. It reminded me too much of that lamp. Actually, that wasn’t the real problem. The real problem for me was that it was a heat sink. There was no way for me with a plumber’s torch and solder to make everything adhere. It was too constricting. I couldn’t work fast enogh. I’ve seen what other people have done with copper, and it’s very impressive, but it wasn’t for me.

 

TH: What was your main objective in switching from copper to steel:

SJ: To realize what was in my mind’s eye. I didn’t want to copy Zachmann. I didn’t want to compete, but to be on par. I wanted to be on par with what I perceived could be a beautiful effort.

 

TH: Have there been other artists that influenced you or that you enjoy?

SJ: Gary Gunderson influenced me in that he posted early videos before you could post videos on the internet. I forget how he served them up, but he had a couple of his pieces – this is in the 90s, late 90s – he had a couple of his pieces that he had recorded and he had put them up. I watched those, and his influence on me was this: the world went from one rolling ball sculpture artist to two. So it doubled in size, and that was actually very good. And then through searching – I think I looked in the phone book of all things – somehow, somewhere I got that he was around Seattle. I looked in the phone book and found out that he lived not very far away from me, and felt a kinship. It was kind of company.

 

TH: Did you ever visit him?

SJ: Yeah, he came over to my shop a couple years ago. We visited for a couple hours, and we talked about sculptures, and I showed him how I make mine. It was very fun. Nice guy.

 

[Tom and Stephen discuss the idea of a gathering of RBS artists.]

Stephen responds: I think it’s a testament to our natures and to the medium that we would all actually WANT to get together.

TH: It’s like when car builders or woodworkers get together and they all look at each others’ work and say, “Hey, how’d you do that!”

SJ: Right. It’s because we’re all working on the same solution to the same problems.

TH: I told somebody the other night. I said, ‘I’m really into problem solving, and that’s what my artwork is. All I’m trying to do is figure out how to get a marble from Point A to Point B in the coolest way possible.’

SJ: [Stephen laughs] It’s a life goal!

TH: You can physically move a marble with your hands. Just lift a marble and move it from one place to the next, but that’s not very cool, not very exciting. So the whole problem is, how do you make it fun?

SJ: I’m actually writing this down. I might put this on my web site: ‘How to get a marble from Point A to Point B, it’s a life’s calling.’ You know, I’m NEVER not thinking about these things.

 

TH: What other influences do you have on your work aside from other rolling ball sculptors?

SJ: Apollo rockets, the Apollo rocket program. When you see the Saturn V on the stand, that’s one of the largest manifestations of kinetic art assembled by humans, and that had a huge impression on me in the sixties. I was born in ’63. I had the Apollo coins, the models, the big book with all the pictures. And dad worked on the Apollo rockets as well, fuel systems. He was on the Gemini, the Mercury, the Apollo. Then I went to work many, many, many years later on the Titan IV rockets.

Other influences…there was this place called Pacific Ocean Park. It was in Venice Beach, CA. When I was a kid, before I left the states I went there, and at the entrance it was this Disneyland wannabe. At the entrance there was this huge swoopy, sculpture thing that had big glass balls mounted to it that looked like they were going to roll down the thing. I’ve seen pictures of it and I go, “Oh, I can see how that influenced me.”

And then, this is a great one: the Watts Towers. In the 40s or 50s with rebar or bits of glass or seashells and whatever else he found laying around and cement, [Simon Rodia] started building these 100-foot tall spires on his property before there were any rules against that. And I look at what he did and I see the beginnings, I see the frame structure for a lot of my art. I remember that influenced me seeing those as a kid.

And then, of all things, of all things…the ship that we sailed on that went from southern California to New Zealand. This is in 1968. It was called the SS Orsova. It was the first welded-hull passenger ship. Everything prior to that point was riveted. I remember being on this huge kinetic, living, breathing monstrosity that I got to explore. I was five, but I can remember it well.

And of course my mother and my father. My mom was an artist, and my dad was an engineer. My mom was also a computer programmer.

Mom did poster boards, paintings, anything creative that she could do at home. Decoupage, that kind of stuff. I wouldn’t say she was a selling artist or anything, but she was very creative, and I watched her do it. So I learned how to do that by watching her: “Oh, that’s being creative. I got that.”

 

TH: Do you have a favorite piece that you’ve created?

SJ: Umm…Yeah, I think it would have to be number 14, because that was the first ring lift I did, and I had been thinking about hubless wheels for…in 1984 I was working at Rockwell on the B1 bomber and somehow I was talking to somebody and I got it in my mind – I was always inventing things – and I started designing a one-wheeled motorcycle in 1984, and it was based on a hubless wheel design. I have sketches for days on this thing. People would comment that it would never work, and here we are twenty years later, and people have them going – that’s okay! But it was that hubless wheel idea, and for some reason it had been in my head forever and it finally manifested itself in that #14 because it’s a hubless wheel.

TH: Do you have a favorite piece that another artist has created?

SJ: Ooh, it would have to be Jeff Zachmann’s early pieces. Yeah, it would have to be his early stuff. Oh, and I do like Stephen Fleury’s work. It’s sad that he doesn’t make it anymore. I learned some good things from him. I went and visited him in New Hampshire and I learned some good things from him.

Join me here next Thursday for part two of my interview with the talented rolling ball sculpture artist Stephen Jendro in which he discusses tools, construction ideas, the biggest challenge in RBS building and the one thing that causes him stress!

To get a great look at more of Stephen’s work, be sure to go check out his web site at StephenJendro.com for plenty more photos,  information and great video of his work in action!