I am excited to report that I have recently completed a small rolling ball sculpture. This piece had several new challenges for me. For starters, it is a very small piece, measuring 6″x11.5″x6.5″. That’s not a lot of space in which to make things interesting! To accomplish that I used several pieces of scrap steel that I claimed out of the scrap heap at work. Visually, this piece has some real fun stuff going on.

Secondly, the sculpture is composed entirely of mild steel, which means it will rust if not coated with something that serves as a moisture barrier. I could have used standard paint, but that would wear away after a while where the marble rolls. Plus, regular paint just isn’t what I wanted to use, and I didn’t want it to change the color of the metal. I really wanted it to not look like it was painted! It took some internet searching, some phone calls, some driving, plus a little hit-and-miss investigation, but I feel fortunate to have found a place that was actually excited about taking on my odd little challenge to them: “See, it has this marble that rolls around, and the marble hits one part and rings. It has to keep that ring even after it has been painted.” They actually got a kick out of that whole idea, gave me a nice trial price to allow me to test their electrostatic paint process, and I’m pleased to say this thing looks fantastic! You can’t tell it has been painted, and the ring is great! Things went so well I am planning on doing a series of these pieces priced right around $175.

At any rate, I’ll let the video fill in all the blanks. Likely you are really curious to see what I’m fussing about.