Video for Ashely Longshore’s RBS Valentine’s Day Card!

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Tom Harold

There’s been such a flurry of activity lately that even though this work of art was completed all the way back in February, I didn’t get the video done until fairly recently. It’s a really cool little piece that has garnered accolades from someone big in the art world!

Ashley Longshore is considered to be THE pop art diva. Referred to as “Andrea Warhol,” the New Orleans painter has been featured in publications such as Forbes, Elle, Vogue, the Huffington Post, the New York Post and many others. Her clients include film, television, sports and rock stars. She has accomplished all of this without having gallery representation. Rather, she sells her work mainly via social media, especially using Instagram.

How do I fit in? Back in January Ashley posted on Instagram asking for people to send her valentines. I thought this might be a fun way to possibly connect with someone who works with the world of art marketing in the same way I am also pursuing it. I created her a folding metal card that opens up into a real rolling ball sculpture! I had no idea if she would pay attention to it at all, if I’d even get a reply, but it seemed like I might have a fair chance, as I was doubting anyone else would send her something remotely similar.

I sent it off and sort of forgot about it in the rush of other projects, but a few days after Valentine’s Day I got a comment on my Instagram from Ashely herself! The full comments are in the video, but, in part, she said, “omg!!!!!! This card is the COOLEST card on the planet!!!!!! I LOVE it! I will have it forever! u r awesome!!!!” That’s not quite an exact quote. I actually left out a lot more exclamation points!

I am so grateful for Ashley’s comments! And there are more! Below you can check out the video for the sculpture that is loved by one of the biggest names in pop art!

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!

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!

Yes, it takes that long!

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Tom Harold

Sometimes I beat myself up in this whole creation process. The expense of time is something that really gets to me at present, because I don’t have near as much free time to create art as I would like to have. If I work on a project, or even a portion of one, and it takes longer than I think it should, I can be pretty hard on myself about my supposed “poorly managed time.” Most of the time this is totally unreasonable. Actually, maybe it’s always unreasonable.

Today’s post is a perfect example of that. I conceived the basket assembly shown here as a means to keep the marbles from accidentally being dropped onto the glass plant terrarium that will hang near where the marbles are loaded. It was an excellent and attractive solution to the problem. In my head it was very straightforward. It seemed like such a simple solution couldn’t take much time: basket, wires, welding. Two hours, maybe three? No.

I wound up spending hours and hours on it, perhaps six. My first reaction was, “What! How could that take so long! It’s just – it’s just a bunch of semicircles in a frame! That shouldn’t have take so long to do! I should have known better! I must not be working fast enough! How could I let all that time slip by?”

Later I stepped back and did some really quick, really basic math. There are 28 upright pieces forming the sides of the basket. Each of those pieces required on tack weld to hold it in place, so that’s 28 welds right there. Then I had to go back and tack weld them at the other end so that both ends were secure, making 56 welds.

Once everything was tacked and secured, I went back over all of them on both the inside and the outside of the basket using filler wire to create attractive finish welds that would also be completely solid and sturdy, assuring that no amount of vibration from loading the marbles would ever cause one of the welds to break. That makes four additional welds for each “leg.” Four welds times 28 equals 112 more welds. Add that to the tack welds and we have 168 welds.

Two main pieces form the upper lip. Adding those pieces to each other made for at least four more welds, probably six. Now we’re up to 174 welds.

One hundred seventy-four welds. How long does it take to make a single weld? Not too long, a few seconds at most. For many of those welds, however, I didn’t just make the weld. Most of the weld joints were not conveniently positioned. I had to move the sculpture, rotate it one way or another, lay it on its back, turn it upside down, I even had to clamp other pieces of metal onto the sculpture so I’d have a place to rest my hands while welding. That all adds to the build time.

And all of that doesn’t take into account the time I took designing it, bending the wire to the right shape, cutting and fitting all the pieces together. I was really lucky if something fit together on the first try. More often than not I had to grind things to fit just right. More time.

Oh, and cleaning! Let’s not forget the cleaning. That was fun to do after it was all burnt and ugly looking, but it still added time to the build process.

It ended up taking three or four days of available time to complete. Considering all that, well, I didn’t do too badly. Most of the pieces I create for these sculptures are completely individual, even to me. A big part of why I do what I do is the individuality and uniqueness of each piece. It means that certain things are just going to take a long time. The big benefit to all that effort, however, is that not even I can create two works that will be exactly alike. I hope the results speak for themselves.

So I’m going to keep practicing not being so hard on myself, save time where and when I can, and keep working to produce truly unique and special pieces of moving art. How’s that sound?

Challenging myself and new sculpture video for “Dropping In”

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Tom Harold

It has been a tremendously productive past few months, and here is one more result of my decision to create one new piece a week for as long as possible. There’s been a change in plans, but I’ll fill you in on that later. For now, news and video on the new sculpture!

Titled “Dropping In,” I deliberately made an effort to create something different with this one. I’d had a thought around the beginning of the year for a method of creating track that would be rather quick, but also brought with it some limitations. However, limitations always translate into a pattern of thought like this: “Hmmm…I could do that, but that would mean I couldn’t do these other things. Huh. What if I couldn’t do those other things? That seems like a bad thing, but it just means I have to find another way of reaching my goal. If I can’t do X, then…then the challenge is to find a Y that will resolve the issue, and quite possibly be awesome in the process!”

This line of thinking worked its way around in my head for a while. Then “Lunar Walk” showed up on my work bench piece by piece, and I realized it was time to play around with some of those ideas. Turns out they worked pretty well! The sculpture looks really cool and is different from what you very often see with rolling ball sculpture. I enjoyed building it and its function. Even better, when other people got a look at it, they liked it as well. Success!

Once that piece was done I was ready to engage in my idea 100%. I was going to make a bunch of perfectly straight track sections in a whole batch and then…well, I didn’t know what, but there was only one way to find out!

Turns out it really was a challenge. Curves create a certain type of feel. They also allow for gradual changes in depth and speed. I was losing a lot of advantages in some areas, but it just made me more determined to figure out something cool with my idea.

I suppose I could have made my track sections bowed or wavy, but I really wanted to go with the idea of making this piece with nothing but straight, flat track. I could see something in my head that really wanted to take shape. Once I started laying the completed track sections out on the work bench, things really began clicking. The “steps” portion of the sculpture just seemed too perfect, and I was getting excited about the bigger challenge of keeping the track only gradually sloped so that the marble wouldn’t roll too quickly. Anyone who builds RBS will tell you that controlling roll speed at a slow pace is difficult!

When the basic track route was laid out I started welding some of the pieces together. I had no specific frame in mind, but once I started looking at the steps taking shape it snapped in place: strutted uprights! I immediately thought, “Oh, man, now you’ve done it. That’s going to take a LOT more time!” Remember, I was trying to get this piece done within one week. Just building one upright with struts is time-consuming, but here I had the idea for a triangulated piece. That was going to take even more than triple the time it took to make a single-sided one! Nevertheless, I knew the idea was perfect. I couldn’t NOT build it after having seen it in my head.

Hours of work followed. The uprights turned out great, but required a good deal of patience in setup and welding to keep them from warping horribly. The track worked with the frame visually even better than I could have hoped! Keeping the track sections slanted at just the right angle took additional patience and lots of adjustment, but once I had it working it was right on.

I’m very pleased with the end result on this one. I imagine that it is not to the taste of everyone, but I appreciate its uniqueness, and I’m sure there is someone else that feels this one is just right for them. I was also struck with the idea that the open area in the sculpture could be used as a mounting point for an award or a photograph that I could add at the client’s request. I know if I worked somewhere, say an engineering firm, and I was given this piece of art with a plaque affixed to it, I’d be a lot happier than if I got the usual brass and wood plaque from a trophy shop. This is one to remember! Plus, every single person coming in the office would want to play with it! How many other trophies can do that?

As mentioned earlier, my goal has been one new piece a week for several month’s worth of time. I have just received two new sculpture commissions, both of which have me extremely excited! These are larger works that will take some time to complete, so the small pieces will be on hold for a while, but I will continue to update here with other news as I have it.

Thanks to everyone who supports my work. I appreciate your efforts in forwarding my videos and putting up comments on various internet outlets. You help me do bigger and better things!

Tom Harold

Writing on creativity and rolling ball sculpture

Tag Archives: RBS