RBS Artist Interview Series – In production!

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Tom Harold

A month back I brought you a wonderful interview with the talented RBS artist Stephen Jendro. I stated at that time that I would be releasing one new artist interview every third Thursday of the month. While that was admirably ambitious on my part, I didn’t fully realize how challenging it would be. In order to bring you high quality material that I am gathering from all across the country (and perhaps around the world!), I’m going to have to slow down the timeline a bit. There’s lots happening in that expanded time frame, however!

While there will be a wait, I can honestly tell you it is going to be worth it. I’ve been using much of my time lately to interview two more amazing rolling ball sculpture artists and to come up with some really fascinating stories from each of them. I have also been lining up further interviews for the coming months with other stunningly talented artists. It’s really going to be amazing. I’m so stoked about the opportunity to bring this to you! These artists are helping to provide a look at the emergence of a modern art form in their own words. It’s fascinating! Plus, if you’re a creator, yes, there will be building tips thrown in as well. You know you love it!

This is a minor gear change, but it will be for the better. I look forward to bringing you some A+ material that’s really going to shed some light on the unique and fascinating world of rolling ball sculpture and those who make it!

Of course, none of this will affect blog posts on other topics related to my art. You can still expect to see those popping up, so stay tuned!

The Underrated Value of Asking for Help

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Tom Harold

I’d like to say I never need to ask for help, that I figure out every problem I have on my own. I think I used to spend lots of time trying to figure things out on my own. I just hated asking for help lots of times, and it didn’t serve me well. In the past year I’ve had a couple of experiences that reminded me of the value in asking for help.

A little over a year ago I was tasked with creating a rolling ball sculpture that was going to be displayed in the mayor’s office. The timeline to create the sculpture was extremely short, just days, and this is with me working a full-time job already. I had the entire piece structurally complete from one end of the other, but I was having teething problems. There was a large spiral that wound down and then merged directly into a coil. It was a really cool effect, but it wouldn’t work properly. Mostly it was fine, but on rare occasion one or two marbles would inexplicably just fall through from the top of the coil straight out the bottom. This isn’t something I could display with any sort of pride. With rolling ball sculpture, if it doesn’t quite work, then it doesn’t work, period.

After testing and tweaking and having only slightly better results, I realized time was too precious to lose any more of it. I needed help, fast. I posted to the Facebook group for rolling ball sculpture, describing my problem. In an instant I had builders from all over the world, some with years of experience, lending a hand. Ultimately I can credit Matt Gaulden with offering some key advice about the size of the coil. I had to cut out the coil and replace it, but it worked like a charm. Matt is a great artist who has a host of instructional resources for building rolling ball sculpture. You can check out his work and his online assistance here.

The sculpture, “Meer-col,” was a huge success at the mayor’s office. In fact, I was told by one of the office staff that it was such a big success they had to move it out of the common office area and into the mayor’s conference room, because “too many people were enjoying it.” Check out the video and see for yourself!

More recently, I needed to do some work on the blog. Time wasn’t as crucial, but it was definitely a case where sooner was preferable to later. My WordPress skills are miniscule compared to my sculpture skills. I wanted to do it on my own, and I’d intended to do it on my own, but I’d been intending for months, and it was obvious that it was going to take me too long to figure it all out by myself. I was out of my element. I went to my online group for working artists, asked for help, and Divinity Chan offered to lend a hand.

Divinity was a big help. She was very patient and listened to my desired changes. Patiently she walked through what she was doing, explaining how she was making changes and allowing me to take notes. We fixed errors and made improvements in a matter of minutes – tasks that would have taken me hours of precious free time to work through on my own. As she worked through the process she taught me how to make future changes on my own. “I’m all about empowerment,” she told me. Now I have not only an improved site, but the ability to make future updates myself, which is perhaps the most helpful thing of all. If your WordPress site is giving you a headache and you need someone to help relieve the pain, Divinity is an excellent resource. You can reach her at divinityatdivinitychandotcom. Divinity is also a wonderful artist, and I’d be remiss in not including a link to her excellent art work. You can see her vibrant paintings at DivinityChan.com.

I have had to learn a lot of skills to make my art, but one that has proven very valuable to me even before I started making rolling ball sculpture was the skill of asking for help. It’s all about practice. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Save yourself grief and needless frustration. Start practicing. The benefits are fantastic.

1K Followers on IG and Featured at The Metagrobologist!

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Tom Harold

I had a couple of really cool things happen to me today that I wanted to share. First, as you can see above, I reached 1,000 followers on Instagram! Considering that I can’t tie my public awareness to any major films, television shows, hit records or even a shout out from my local newspaper, that’s really pretty damn good! If you’re not following me on IG, get on there and find out what all the fun is about! You get to see tons of in-progress shots and little video clips of me makin’ the marbles do their magic.

Secondly, remember that little bit up there about public awareness? Well, that’s changing! Right around the same moment that a guy on IG with the user name “highheeledchicken” was tapping the “Follow” icon, a web site called The Metagrobologist was featuring me on their web site! Metagrobology is the study of puzzles, so the site is all about studying and having fun with puzzles. Since there are many mechanical puzzles that are also very artful, and since my work contains puzzle-like features at times (“Can you figure out which track the marbles are going to take based on the various switches and paths that are available?) they felt it was a good fit. They called my work “amazing,” and “Really cool!” right here! It’s a pretty fun web site, and they take their puzzles both fun and seriously, both of which I can relate to very well! Stop in and have a look!

It’s a life’s calling, Part 2 – Interview with RBS artist Stephen Jendro

Posted on February 27, 2015 by Tom Harold

Last week introduced the first in a series of interviews I will be conducting with noted rolling ball sculptor artists from all over. I had realized that the art world and the world at large was missing out on a great deal of information about this wonderful art form and the amazing individuals who are creating it. I aim to change that with these interviews, to provide a fuller awareness and begin the process of creating an historical reference for future creators and fans of rolling ball sculpture.

I previously brought you part one of a wonderful interview with the talented Stephen Jendro in which he discussed how bad art leads to good art, working with the Titan IV rocket program, how the Watts Towers inspire framing and sculpture research at the dawn of the internet.

This week in part two Stephen will reveal his biggest challenge when building rolling ball sculpture, what stresses him out most about building RBS, tips for beginners, safety and problem solving. And the birds show up again.

TH: Aside from your welder, what is your favorite tool?

SJ: My little Pandora radio. Not much gets done without the tunes, seriously.

TH: What do you listen to?

SJ: Todd Snider, Tom Waits, Amos Lee, John Prine.

TH: In terms of building rolling ball sculpture, what do you enjoy most about the building process?

SJ: I think what I enjoy the most is that, in order to build one of these things there’s five or six different, discrete activities, and I enjoy them all, and I feel very lucky about that. It’s like the scenery changes. It’s not just one task. I could spend hours, days, sketching things out, whether it’s a new idea or a new sculpture, and that’s an activity unto itself –where I get to sketch and draw ideas. Then I get to physically go out and buy steel. I love doing that. I love going out and picking up steel and parts and bolts and washers. Continue reading →

It’s a life’s calling, Part 1 – Interview with RBS artist Stephen Jendro

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Tom Harold

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? Continue reading →

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!!!!!