Oh, the weekend I had, kids! It was all set to be a bang-up, creative-filled weekend, and by golly if I didn’t just shoot the moon on that one!
The big ingredient in all of this madness was the lack of gigs this weekend. Usually the band plays both nights, if not just a Saturday. It’s not often I get two nights off on a weekend. In addition, I also had very few personal obligations this weekend. No one was getting married, baptized, bailed out, or otherwise taking part in some sort of activity that demanded my presence for very long. Well, someone had a birthday, and I showed for that, but it was for a (still very young!) old friend. Good times and merriment were had.
But back to the other merriment, my merriment. With the weekend free of gigs, I spent most of Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon hunched over my workbench in the basement, floodlights ablaze, brow furrowed in concentration, and I made stuff. Pliers, wire, torch, solder, flux, wood, Dremel – I was a dynamo, I tell you! A friggin’ dynamo! You want proof? No problem!
View from the top.
Apparently, I got going so quickly that I never took pictures of just two spirals mounted, or maybe I did and offloaded them from my camera really quickly, I can’t recall. But here we are, already looking far more complete than a week ago. I think this photo is from Saturday evening. I have the second spiral mounted as well as the third. At the bottom you can just see the final wire with a little flux on it. I was getting close to adding the fourth spiral and realized I’d not stopped for a photo.
Side shot.
To the left here is a side view of the same. You get a good idea of the vertical spacing here. The most work involved is getting the exit ramps and entrance ramps all tweaked and worked out and smooth in transition. I easily spend the bulk of my time getting the track to leave the bottom of the spiral smoothly and move on to the next one without incident or drama.
Another top shot with four spirals mounted.
Here’s a nice top view of four spirals mounted up. I think the third and fourth spirals went fairly easily…well, no, maybe they didn’t, but going from the second to the third wasn’t any piece of cake either. The exit from spiral three was a real bear. Lots of tweaking was involved. I have to say, though, that I was putting together some fine solder joints on all this work. It was slightly incredible, if I do say so myself. It took an entire other sculpture worth of work, but I think I’m getting the hang of this soldering thing finally.
Top three-quarter view. Nice waterfall effect here.
Here’s a three-quarter view on the left giving a sense of the flowing path the marble will have – or at least I like to hope. The switchback effect from the second spiral to the third comes from the fact that spiral number two rotates counterclockwise, while all the other spirals go clockwise. I thought this would be clever and fun when I did it, but after I started assembling the whole thing I realized just how much harder it made things by switching the direction of the entrance and exit ramps. Yes, oh-so-clever me. I made it work, but it required a lot of figuring and scowling. I would do the same sort of thing again, but I think it would work better on a larger sculpture where I had more room to manipulate the changes in track direction.
Spock's martini glass is starting to look less like a martini and more just plain...groovy.
And here we have the final results for Sunday evening. I think we’re getting the martini glass effect again on this one. I’m not sure about that whole initial ramp I made for the first spiral, but there you go. Seemed like a fine idea at the time. I’m not quite sure why there’s such a sharp drop between spiral two and three, but I think it has something to do with me not quite knowing how to design the exit ramp appropriately at that time. On this project I’ve learned a ton about spiral exits. They still take a lot of work, but I’m learning how to get them to exit in the direction I want rather than just letting them go wherever they seem to want to go. I’ve yet to figure out how to bend one exactly right from the outset, and since these things never end up going together the way I think they are in my little paper scribblings, it kind of doesn’t matter.
We’re getting close to the end, kids! I was doing bends and tweaks on the final spiral last night before I shut the lights out. With that and the exit ramp to build I’m guessing it may take me another week to get it done. Then…well, then it still won’t be done, because my friend Tina Hanagan is going to design a base for it! I’m very excited about this. Very. I think it will add a lot to the finished design, besides the fact that I think her work is really cool anyway.
With that in mind, I think it’s interesting to note that I’ve just recently found out that another friend of mine is doing lampwork – glass bead making. She tells me she might be able to make some custom marbles for me. Yeah, I know, you’re all just as giddy over this news as I am! We’ll see how that little wrinkle turns out.
Genevieve reminded me that I need to post whatever music I was listening to at the time. This blog’s auditory inspirations: The soundtrack to “Dusk Till Dawn,” and Dar Williams “End of the Summer.”
Until next post, kids, stay creative!
