Blizzard from 1979

I design and built Blizzard in 1979 as and edition of 75. It was one of the first sculptures I built using ball bearings. This is a weight drive sculpture using two independent mechanisms.

Each mechanism drives its own patterning wheel. The mechanisms operate at slightly different speeds so the wheels go in and out of phase. This was an early attempt to add constantly shifting patterns to my sculptures.

The sculpture runs very quickly but is quiet relative to my earlier pieces. It took several additional years of work to develop mechanisms that allowed me to control the pace of the motion.

Seascape at Home

I built Seascape in 2002 for the special sculpture wall in our home. My wife Marji designed and we built our home/studio in 1978. A prime requirement was that it have interesting walls. There is one special wall in our living room where I get to "play" with whatever comes into my head. It is my creative canvas.

I had two goals when I started this design - I wanted a smooth flowing, wave like motion and a long run time.

For the run time I decided to use my first triple winding mechanism. I have used double winding mechanisms in several designs that give me about 16 hours of run time. I hoped that by adding another spring and winder I could push the run time to 24 hours. My experiment was successful and Seascape does run for 24 hours on a single winding.

You can see the motion in the short video below.

Exploring "bird" motion

A year or so ago I decided it was time to explore "bird" motion a bit more.  The first sculpture was a large piece with a slow, graceful motion. It went through several iterations as I played with the form of the bird carrying wheels but I was pleased with the efficiency of the form of the swooping "legs" or power levers. The only problem with the piece was that it was too large to be an edition sculpture. Sculptures look much smaller on the computer screen when I'm designing! 

I took this design and reduced it by about half. I had to modify the mechanism to make it work correctly but I liked the effect of the reduced size. The motion was quicker and more dynamic and I could pack the sculpture in box that would fit within normal UPS size requirements.

The first sculpture I named Eagle for its soaring motion. The second sculpture became Falcon because it had elements of the soaring motion combined with a quicker darting effect.

At about this same time I started working on another bird sculpture with an entirely new mechanism. The working title for this piece was Sparrow because I thought of it as a smaller piece with a more unpredictable motion. Sparrow ended up being the most challenging of the three designs. I almost gave up on it numerous times. It the end the name Sparrow didn't fit any longer and it became Journey.

Falcon and Journey are both on the web site and in my studio as edition sculptures. Eagle sold before I had a chance to show it on my web site.  Putting up photos is yet another item on my to-do list!