Bubble Ballista

Erin asked me to make plaything for kids for the opening of the Durham Farmers market. The only thoughts I had on the subject were to fuse bubbles with a Roman siege engine. After the requisite quest for parts, where I met a Dutch woman who was a Nia black belt who gave me a pool and a little girls bike, I got crackin.

The Bubble Balista in the back yard. No bubble test was had due to time constraints. I was working without a net. But the idea was I could reach down to the pool and gracefully spread an arc of bubbles into the sky.

After a hilarious voyage with the Bubble Ballistic across town I set up at the Market. 1# Problem: No hose as was promised. No water, a key element in bubbles. The children pathetically gathered around the hot, empty pool. They knew this was for them, it looked cool, but why does it suck so?
After running around Central Park trying to get water, I was sinking into failure. People offered to do a bucket brigade, but I didn't want make people. Then Chris from Fulsteam provided the needed energy. He had trash cans on rollers. We could fill up 50 Gallons at a time and roll them from the Farmer's Market. We started to do this and filled the pool to the thrilled children. With a huge audience and a expectant crowd, I theatrically had the children ask the bubble fairy to grant us bubbles then poured in the soap and glycerin. I had the kids slowly stir the mixture in. Slow means fast to kids. The water got pretty agitated as well as dirty. (dirty dirty children!)Matt came by and called me Mr. Bubble, but I would only answer to the name of Dr. Bubble. I made many agonizing attempts to draw large beautiful bubbles into the sky. Bubble skin formed over the array of hoops, but ultimately only succeeded in making one small bubble. I tried more theatrics to cover the art and engineering failures. Why had the bubble fairy abandoned us!!!?There were collective releases of baited breath as another bubble popped before its time. Too many parents had too many unhelpful suggestions. I took one really bad one so I could stop making half baked bubbles: agitate the water. The kids did this to great aplomb. I gave the ok for them to dive in and play and many Durham kids received their first good bath in weeks. (dirty dirty children)

Dirty Dirty children! The bubble balista was a great example of spectacular failure. It created a challenge for heros to solve (Chris -water), opportunities for kind gifts (Nia blackbelt), collective sanitation, collective suspense, urban mythology (bubble fairy, Dr. Bubble and unprogrammed fun. Go Durham! Give me more assignments like this.

Mara

I like this little freestander I did for Mara's birthday last year. It's a variation on the railroad spike flowers with a three line pod form and curly finials.

Wave Forms

I removed a triangular section of sod and wired it into the metal structure. It's interesting to see what plants pop up out of the sod section. The soil has memory and different plants are just waiting for their opportunity.
The waves start to to roll in. These came from a sketch a day discipline I had going right before Fiona was born.
This is the sketch which formed the drive for Earth Wave Sculpture. It also generated forms for SignWave and StarWave (still in production). I think I'll taper off waves for a while, but it's a good form to have in the vocabulary.

Serpentine Machine Spring 05

This was the first in the Mechana family I mentioned in the last post. The form came from a doodle. I layered and glued cardboard to form a solid shape, paper mache'd the outside then spraypainted and laquered. I gave it as a good luck gift to a couple.

Mechana Carnevale

Mechana #4: Chittara

Mechana #3

Wood, aluminum copper, bicycle parts

The machinifesto story goes like: "Machines are obsolete. Digital has replace analog, cloud computing replaces hard drive. Therefor machines can evolve and assume forms beyond their function. They can play, fight love and dream. " I imagined them going to a circus or carnival. Instead of Homo ludens, playful man, they become Machina ludens, playful machines.

Mechana #1 Spring 2011- Oak, aluminum

Mechana #2- Spring 2012- Oak, Metal
Our Thought Bridge-Spring 2011

The metal part was initially going to be a strut that would help over engineer the structure of the pianoNovo. I thought it detracted from pianoNovo, and it wasn't needed for structure, but was cool on it's own. I liked a structural element becoming part of a traditionally 2D wall art piece. What does a structure do when it's not needed? Gravity laws don't apply in the imagist world of a painting. These collages are transitions between a world of 2-D imagery and a world of 3-D structure. Would a structure continue to bridge with a ghost of it's original purpose?

The Mechana's material is appropriated as scrap from some of the oldest buildings in town, from un-needed machines and from out-dated signs. The material follows the message of former stable structures being used for frivolous pursuits.

Sculpture bike racks

Tower base and messy outdoor workspace
Details I drew for Al Frega
Bike rack with 3 bikes on a 5' equilateral triangle space. I think it could take 6. The sculpture could be seen above the bikes.
Last year Al Frega introduced me to the wonders of using a pipe bender to make some bike racks. He had gotten a commission to do art on the Chapel Hill Greenways. At my prior job, I had helped design the Bolin Creek Greenway III. I was interested in continuing to work on the greenways and it was great to hang out with Al. He needed construction drawings for the greenway art to satisfy the town. He just builds things at full scale and brings it in as a model. I drew up the details and helped him install (dig in) the art. He designed bike racks, benches with big concrete slabs and 6'-10' towers he called "Sentinels." They were all made with reused materials. The material theme that ran through all the work was a waste brake drum from the Chapel Hill buses. The look great and function well.

This year after the Scrapel Hill competition I bought a pipe bender to use on several projects I had in mind. I was going to build a zeppelin tower for the Durham Beaver Pageant. I wanted the aluminum tower to mount to the sculptural base and the base to have a second life as a bike rack. The tower base was huge, to big for an urban bike rack... maybe for a penny farthing. I scaled down the design and drew it in 3d. I want to put it up around downtown businesses that have a lot of bike traffic. I want to invite local sculptors to mount work on the top of the racks. More to follow.

SignWave Sketch

This is the process sketch and superstructure for the SignWave.

Piano pieces

This is the brassified cast iron metal structure and what was left of the wood resonator board. I thought of this pianoNovo as a conversation between the piano makers, the piano destroyers and myself. The damage to the structure helped guide the form of the sculpture.

constuction pianoNovo

I used the story of encountering the piano being beaten in the narrative for the piece. It poetic; an object of beauty being beaten by hammers. Less poetic was getting it into the above for. First KG and I arrived with the truck. We move boulders together for her design build company, but we couldn't budge this. I came back with Al Frega and a big truck. Al specializes in massive metal art in Durham. He his son and I moved onto the truck and into the back yard. First I played with the piano, had Fiona then 1 year old dance on the strings. Then I began to take it apart with a series of bongs and clangs and ominous tones that became the score to my deconstruction work. Nothing sounds creepier than taking apart a piano. I dutifuly and carefully took it apart until I ran out of time and space. I had to clear the decks for the Sign Wave. I had to bang out the pins that held the strings with hammers and stow it in the basement. (guilt) Once I started working with it again 6 months later, I sawed out the undamaged wood sound board. This created an appealing wing like shape. With that as a fixed price, I collaged the other piano elements until it formed the above configuration. This visually resonated. I cut up the brassy harp and fabricated a base on wheels. (How things are moved, how they are transported and how they fit in doors is always consideration to ignore at peril. I still sometime do) I didn't have the space to add the wing on top so I had to mount it in the truck on my lunch break the day of the install. This was the first time it all came together. It was fun working on the truck by the Scrap Exchange. I dropped a critical screw and a little girl found it and "saved the sculpture." The actual install went off without a hitch.

Nanci meditating in SignWave

SignWave

SIGN WAVE

When traveling, we encounter thousands of visual commands in the form of signs to modify our behavior. While many are useful most we ignore. When drawing towns and landscapes within my practice of landscape architecture, I almost always edit these out of my memory of the place. Yet they persist and subtly affect our visual environment and must change how we view and think about our towns. Ultimately, all of these signs become trash when they no longer signify. Sign Wave is a micro-landscape that sculpturally describes the relationship between viewer and the graphic imperative that clutter the view shed.

There is an in and an out to the SignWave: out is a cluttered patchwork of signs, in is a tranquil meditation space. One can climb in through the back of the Sign Wave by a small door inspired by a VW bug engine cover.

pianoNovo

pianoNovo

I stumbled on a repulsive scene: three men were beating a piano with hammers. It screamed minor chords like a living thing. The men were house cleaners who were removing the remnants of the former inhabitants. To me it seemed like a horrible waste of something old and beautiful.

Pianos have emotional and physical gravity. For several generations they were a symbol of affluence, permanence and culture. The older piano-playing generations are fading and leaving their instruments to untrained hands. Most of these go unwanted and are building blocks in the great pyramids of trash our culture builds. So I stopped the man and took ownership of the still resounding 400 pound piano.

After I examined the hammer marks, I began to realize that it was no longer a piano. I did not have the ability to make it appropriately musical. The piano had to become something new. I started to take it apart with ominous bongs and clangs that became the score to my work. The pianoNovo project is a conversation in form between the piano builders, the piano smashers and myself. As I refashioned it, I thought about the changing generational ideas of beauty, permanence and disposability. I thought about the transitions from actual music of pianos to the “frozen music” of sculpture.