July is a "design month". I don't schedule any production and it feels like vacation! I use the time to read, swim, and, if there's time, work on some new ideas and finish up some old ones. The swimming has been great, I have a good book and I'm making progress with some designs. I finished a new sculpture Variation Dream and have a new piece with a working name of Pinwheel up and running. Three other new designs are partially done. They all use variations of a new mechanism I'm working on that isn't quite right yet. This mechanism has potential but will take more time and study to get right. So far it is too complex for the user to set up and not reliable enough.
August is just about here and it is back to work. I'm making Sky Dance in August, working on a replacement design for Seascape and plugging away at the stubborn new mechanism.
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.
I installed Seascape at the new Dansko corporate headquarters and retail outlet in West Grove, PA. in July. They were looking for a large one-of-a-kind sculpture for a protected area in the retail portion of their beautiful new building. The only sculpture I had that was nearly large enough was Seascape.
The installation went smoothly except for one minor glitch, I forgot to pack one knob. I had extras of everything else but no extra knobs. Marji and I had to drive to our daughter's house (about an hour away), steal a knob from her sculpture and drive back to Dansko. Fortunately it was a drive over pretty back roads. We used a GPS and explored several different routes. We stumbled on a Simon Pierce store and had a delightful lunch.
I like how the sculpture looks. I was afraid it might be too small but it fills the space nicely. The facility is beautiful with an open airy feel, many intriguing spaces and art pieces. It's worth a stop just to see the building and all the artworks.
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I started the Variation series in 2003 with Variations Wind, Stars, and Fire. Today I'm bringing out the 9th design in this series called Variation Dream. 
I always think the most recent Variation is the last one and maybe this will really be true this time. But...I really like designing these and am always amazed with how much there is to explore in this area.