I had a long weekend this weekend, and I used it to my fullest advantage – I did art work! The idea for this series of small sculptures has been brewing for months now. It’s actually part of a meme from Facebook, and I think I accepted the challenge sometime back in…July? August? After that I had a lot of other projects in the pipeline, but didn’t let go of the idea. They were going to be *really* simple, but then I asked dad if he could whip up some wood bases for them to make them a little nicer. Yeah – I asked a fellow perfectionist to just whip something up. Right! It took a few months, but I think that it was well worth the wait. He made them waaaay nicer than I had asked for! Thanks, pop!

So dad did some awesome bases, but I was still caught up with other stuff. I did manage to bend up some initial elements for the sculptures a month or two ago, just some basic spirals. Finally, however, I was able to get down to the business of actually assembling them once Christmas had passed. Thanks to the long weekend I managed to finish this one.

Here is the first from a series of five that I will be doing:

As you can see, it’s a rather simple design. Just a basic spiral. It’s a little hard to add much more to something this small, but I tried to do something fun with the ending ramp. The path dips sharply coming out of the spiral, and by the time the marble reaches the end it has built up a good bit of speed. It reaches the upright portion and tries to climb right up it, runs out of steam, and falls back on itself where it comes to rest in the bottom of the “U.”

Above is a fun view of things and kind of gives you an idea of the roller coaster feel it has when it finishes.

For a simple piece I think it turned out pretty well. After finishing it I immediately started on another one. I hope to have it completed by the end of the week! I just love finishing projects. It’s so counter to the way I used to live my life where I’d start something, get discouraged, shelve it, and then feel bad about the whole thing. There were some things about this sculpture that didn’t fit my idea of the perfect piece, but I managed to let go of that stuff and just be okay with it. Pretty kickass.