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This is how it starts: a piece of wood, a spiral, and a leftover part from a harmonica. You just put them all there on the table and then wait for some kind of genius to strike. I don’t know if genius has ever struck me, but I do end up making stuff. I’ll take what I can get!
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This is the start of an RBS, kids. A few pieces of standard 10-gauge electrical wire, stripped and bent into a few nifty shapes. Soon it will be so much more.
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Ah, THIS is what I’ve been going after. I think this is finally a photo that feels different for me. I guess it’s a lighting thing. It started with the dirty salt shaker, and now we have this. It’s possible that something may finally be happening with my photography. I hope. I don’t know, but I hope! I don’t know quite how I did this (other than a couple of obvious things), but I hope I can do it and do it better further down the road.
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It’ll become something cool, trust me.
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Begun way, way, waaaay back in, uh, whatever month it was begun in – August? – I have *FINALLY* finished the sculpture that I constructed for my nephew. I generally try to stick with the “one” rule on “one-pic-a-day,” but the RBS stuff is always special, and I wanted to provide a couple of views of the finished piece so you could get a good idea of how it looks. Thusly, you get an extra pic today. Woot!
I had to tweak and futz with things, but it wasn’t all that bad, really. It was mostly making things sturdier, and then there was the creation of the extremely cool wood base that my dad made for it so that my nephew (who is five) wouldn’t accidentally damage it every time he picked it up to move it around. It turned out quite nicely considering the initial build time on it was only six hours! I’d like to do some others around this basic theme, and I think I may get Tina to throw down some of her awesome stained wood skills on future wood bases.
Yet another art project completed! Woohooo!
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Did I say I was finished with this? I think I did…the other day. Maybe? Silly me. I can never stop improving something. In this photo there’s one improvement that’s readily viewable, and that’s the little leg there at the lower right corner. You can even see I haven’t soldered it in place yet. I removed the simple spiraled curl that had previously been the terminus of the whole shebang, and I added a ramp to that last spiral and had it curve around to the lower right there. Nice, eh? Makes it a lot easier for little kids to get at the marbles and put them back up top for another trip.
Next up is to have dad help me make a nice wood base for it.
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I do so love these. Anyone who has been hanging around here for a while knows that I love these things. Rolling ball sculptures. They’re pointless. You put a marble at the top, and it rolls down to the bottom. It doesn’t accomplish anything useful, not in that “We have work to do! Money must be made! Mountains must be leveled! Paper must be shredded!” However, they’re just friggin’ fun as all get out.
I haven’t done a lot of work with these lately. Seems like RBS building and reading have taken a back seat recently. I afforded time for this one a few weeks ago, however, during the Masterpiece in a Day event, which, I just realized, I never did fully devote an entry to, so you’ve not seen this thing until now! My apologies. I’m sure you were all chomping at the bit.
Any rate, here it is! It looks a little different than it did on the day of the event. I spent the evening tweaking it. I recurved the legs so that they sweep in toward the base more. This makes it look a little more groovy, plus the base I’m going to make for it will be able to be cut smaller. I also fixed one major support issue. When I first built it the thing was very wobbly. After looking at it for a while and playing with it, I realized it would benefit from one support piece in a strategic place. I made one up and installed it. You can’t even really see it in this photo, but it reaches from the bottom of the first spiral down to the very beginning of the third spiral.
What really surprised me was just how much of a difference this made. I mean, I knew it would help, but had no idea how much! It stands about as solid as any frame of copper could possibly do, even better than I could have planned. I should have been an engineer, you know it? Friggin’ architect. Look at that thing!
Well, it’s base-makin’ time for this bad boy. Since I basically threw it together in six hours, and it’s missing a lot of the refinements of one of my usual pieces, this one is going straight to my 3-year-old nephew. He’ll think it’s cool, and I won’t lay awake at night wondering what someone will think of it.
I’m a little chagrined here, a little excited, a bit enthused, and rather admiring. It is my wont to occasionally peruse that veritable cornucopia of visual medium known as Youtube. There’s TOOOOONS of absolute crap on it, but there is also an amazing amount of truly wonderful material out there to inspire, assist, and educate. Today, while trying to re-find a video on a giant rolling ball sculpture that a college student built for his thesis in engineering or physics or something (it uses bowling balls that reach speeds of 80mph – sweet!) I came across a video I’ve never seen before.
Behold, awesome readers, a copper rolling ball sculpture that aspires to art as much as movement:
View, view, view, and view. I can’t get enough of this thing! I mean, just, like, just check out…LOOK! The frame, it’s not just eight pieces of water pipe soldered together to make a box. Those curves, so swooping and graceful, and notice that where they dip they become contact points for the supports that hold up the track – gorgeous and effective. Two points! The solder joints are all very well done, and the spacers for the track are shaped into rings rather than simple flat bars. Note that other support legs are formed into curved pieces as well, and small termination points are shaped into curls. All these elements add to the whole of the sculpture. It’s very harmonious, no?
And look at the use of open space. The marbles seem to zip and float across the curved track in the center, then gracefully move through the spiral, exiting at the bottom without a bump. The visual grace is fantastic. I admire how he has taken car to not use too many support rods. It has a very clean feeling to it. I wish I could see it up close without the shadows in the background to distract from the effect. It’s really great stuff.
In addition, the lift wheel is beautiful. I’m trying to figure out what it’s made of, as I believe a solid copper piece of that size would price in at an extremely health chunk of change (brass wheels of three inches in diameter are 80 bucks, for what that’s worth, and all metals have sharply increased in price in the past year). The fit and finish on everything is of very high quality.
I post all this, partly in reference to some comments made by Matthew Gaulden about some characteristics of my own work. I must enjoy the curving lines, as I was immediately drawn to this when it came up on my screen. I also post it as a point of interest, to give you an idea of just what inspires me when I do my own work. You and I are learning this stuff together, as I’m very early in the process, and there will be many discoveries as to what makes me go, “Oh, yeah! I wanna do THAT!” Right now, this is the sort of thing I want to do. I’m finishing a smaller work right now, but the long, uninterrupted lengths of smooth track on this piece are really, really getting me going. I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that doesn’t show up in one of my future works. This is finely crafted stuff. I wish the guy lived in the U.S. I’d love to meet him some time.
This weekend I have some free time. Hopefully, that means there will be more accomplishment news come Monday. See you then.