I arrived in the realm of kinetic sculptures through a serendipitous route. My wife, Marji was studying art in college while I was studying physics. She had the original fascination with machines and had done a variety of works with a mechanical flavor. My question was, "Can you make them move?" She wasn't interested in getting that technical and moved on to other things but an idea was planted. We finished school and started life in the working world. I spent 9 months as a computer programmer for an insurance company and decided that it wasn't for me. I "retired" and Wood That Works was born.
Initially I was designing and building wooden toys and executive playthings and selling them at craft shows. One of my more inventive pieces was called "Xylo". It was a kinetic piece where one lever triggered the next in a spiraling series. The motion only lasted a few seconds and then had to be started again. The common question was, "Can you make it last longer?"
This challenge, combined with the memory of Marji's machine sculptures, inspired me to try something more "machine" oriented with an extended run time. My first piece was 6 feet tall and powered by a 20 pound weight. It had a very slight clock-like motion and ran for 30 minutes. I called it "Albert" and even though it was awkward in appearance, I considered it a great success because it "worked."
The next advance was the idea to mount a sculpture on the wall. This eliminated the problem of the big base that comprised most of Albert and gave me more freedom in design. My first piece of this type was called B. W. Cornwallis (for no good reason that I can remember). It was a symmetrical piece with a wheel rolling back and forth across the top. It ran fairly well with a 2-pound weight. I sold my only model the first time I showed it. When I returned to my studio to make another, I couldn't get it to work! I learned to keep a working model of all my pieces.
By that time it didn't matter that B. W. wouldn't work correctly because I had an avalanche of ideas for new mechanisms. I spent many feverish days working and experimenting with them and in a fairly short period of time I designed, built and put into production six new designs - my first series. We (Marji and I) made up a brochure, went to "Rhinebeck" (Northeast Craft Fair) and were in business.
I designed several other pieces in that period and all were mechanism oriented. They had some kind of wheel that rotated back and forth and a mechanism that kept it going. I experimented with many different types of mechanisms, some ran longer than others, some were quiet, some clicked, some were hard to wind. I was focusing on the mechanism and how it moved rather than on the broader rotating motion that was created by the mechanism. "Echo" was the first piece in which I used two rotating wheels to control the mechanism. The resulting interplay between two wheels started me in a new direction and led to a new way of looking at what I was creating.
I started observing and playing with wheel motion rather than just the mechanism motion. I spun wheels in opposite directions and found optical patterns. I also experimented with ways to have one wheel transfer part of its motion to another to create new random motions. The net result of this work is what I consider my second major series. This one included pieces such as Kaleidoscope, Blizzard, and Serpentine. This was in 1979 and it was at this time we realized that I had not yet tapped the depths of possible designs and that the art/craft world was a real career.
Change has occurred over the years not only in the visual design but also in the technical areas. The change from wood and plastic bushings to stainless steel ball bearings and the use of Negator constant force springs as a power source are probably the most dramatic. They helped to increase my design freedom by allowing me to create mechanisms that simply wouldn't have been possible with weight drives or relatively high friction bushings. The technical changes led to new ideas and these in turn created new technical challenges.
Learning to use new tools has also led to changing ideas and designs. The greatest tool improvement was acquiring our first Macintosh computer in 1984. I started using it as a drawing tool to augment my meager drafting skills. The ever increasing speed and power of the computer has allowed me to simulate and test a wide variety of motions and mechanisms before I ever cut a piece of wood. This design freedom has opened my eyes to numerous new possibilities. For more on this, refer to the Techniques section.
I've been designing and building kinetic sculptures for over 2 decades now and I still get excited about each new design that "works." And the good news is that I still have many ideas to explore. Just wait until you see what I'm working on for next year! |