I’m happy to have an update for the blog featuring a recently completed rolling ball sculpture video! I’d been having technical issues with iMovie since late 2016, but those are resolved now, and I’m overjoyed to be able to share full-length feature sculpture videos once again! I plan to have another new video each month starting this month of May and continuing through August. That’s nowhere near my record 12 videos in 2014, but most of those were of small sculptures that took me only a week or two to complete, plus my instructional videos. This video for “High Gear” and the four that will follow are all feature videos of larger sculptures. It’s great to see things moving in this direction!
The theme for “High Gear” was proposed to me by me collector. He is a computer expert as well as an avid racing enthusiast, especially of the IndyCar series. His enthusiasm carries over from simply watching events on TV or attending as a spectator. He owns some fascinating vehicles, and he even has a racing kart that he takes to local track days to rip through corners at high speed.
Given that I am also an auto enthusiast, having grown up with a father who has been captivated by vintage tin his entire life, I was very excited when he held up a large steel gear and said, “Do you think you could add this gear to the sculpture?”
I was probably more amped up about the concept than he was! I wanted to do that and add a few levels on top of it! Not only did it give me a chance to play around with car parts, I was able to really exercise some creative thinking, designing and building with this piece. I said, “I know you race karts. What do you think about putting some of your kart spare parts onto the piece?”
I went home with a box of sprockets, a gear, springs and various other items and a big grin on my face. This was going to be awesome!
Indeed it was, but there were hurdles to overcome. The sprockets and chain he’d given me could be made into a ball lift, but the sprockets were meant to bolt to a hub on the wheel, and those parts would not fit onto the sculpture, at least not in a way that would be at all visually pleasing. Therefor, I had to come up with hubs for the sprockets, and they had to look really cool!
What to do? I could make solid discs. Boring. Really boring. Also unsuitable, because you can’t see through them, and that takes away visual appeal from the rest of the piece. I could make any number of spoke designs, and while a classic five-spoke design would mimic many a racing wheel, it would lose most of its appeal when rendered with a flat sheet of stainless. The visual power in the five spoke mag wheel comes, in part, from the curved depth of the spokes, which I was basically going without.
But a wheel, yes, a racing rim would be the most natural feature to add to this rolling ball sculpture, its theme rooted in high speed automobilia. I just needed to find the right one. It was time to hit the internet and see what sort of inspiration might be idling, waiting for my eyes.
It took a little while. There are lots of wheel designs! Many were unsuitable for their basic design. Either they wouldn’t render well as a flat shape, or they were just plain ugly. With diligence, however, I eventually came across these photos! The Eisert car had a wheel design that looked powerful, and it would transfer well when simplified into a more 2-dimensional design. Perfect!
I took my design to a local waterjet company, and they created a pair of sprocket centers from 1/8″ stainless steel to which I welded hubs with a set screw for the shafts. The sprockets bolt to the hubs, just as they would a go kart. In fact, if you really needed them, you could unbolt them and put them on your kart and use them! The chain is racing kart chain, specific to this application. I fabricated stainless steel ball pickups and welded them to the chain. The result is one of the most interesting chain lifts I have created to date! The stainless hubs combined with the gold anodized sprockets and chain are quite striking. I love how unique and visually arresting it is!
Adding the gear was a challenge, as I didn’t want to effectively just make a hook and hang a chunk of metal from it. I wanted it to really be part of the sculpture in some way. Its sheer weight made things difficult. As a counterweight it made little sense, requiring far too much force to move it in the space I had available. As a static component it couldn’t just hang in some area, doing nothing. I just can’t have that. I like functional parts, generally speaking.
I thought on it quite a bit, and eventually I decided that it would work well as an element in which the ball would pass through. That was fine, but then, at my collector’s request, it also had to be removable! So, how can I have track passing through it if the track has to come apart so that the gear can be removed?
I’m going to let you find that out, plus see the other fun parts I added, like the spring-as-sliding-weight in the video below!
This was serious fun, building this rolling ball sculpture. Having a passion for cars, this hits on all cylinders for me. I’d love to do a piece that’s even more deeply infused with automechanical components, like a frame and much of the parts from an old Triumph motorcycle, or a large amount of pieces taken from distinctive automobile such as a Ferrari, Packard or Jaguar. What about another racing theme? With a full complement of vintage parts: suspension, steering, fuel control, brakes and on, a sculpture such as this would command all the attention in the room!
If you’re interested in seeing what I can create for you, drop me a line at my contact page. In the meantime, check out the video for “High Gear.” Thanks so much for following along my creative path with rolling ball sculpture.