KINETIC SPECULATION
This is a
great time to be a kinetic sculptor. It's the end of an age.
With the decline of manufacturing industries, especially the
textile mills, there is a supply of interesting materials
flowing through scrap yards in the south. I frequently visit
these scrap yards to prospect through the rivers of stuff.
The majority of it is ugly, dirty, and even hazardous. There
may be a toxic fire burning there, men driving heavy
machinery right behind me as I lean over a barrel or a box
on my belly with my feet hanging over. But I'm drawn to
these objects, which are artifacts to me, artifacts with a
history.
Somebody
designed these things to exacting specifications. There was
an engineer who drew up the parts and sent them out to
specs. Someone bid on them; they priced, manufactured, and
then used them for years. They were worth something back
then and they're worth something now - according to the
scrap yard, usually about a dollar a pound. But to me, they
have a much higher value. I see what it took to produce
them; I see the jobs, I see the agriculture, and then once
it touches on something like agriculture, it just keeps
going back - to cotton, here in the south, and slavery.
There's a rich history here. There's often an elegance of
simplicity here too, in the design of these objects, just
like there's an elegance in the way the universe works. If a
thing does its job, you've got to respect that.
For me, it's
an endeavor. I'm constantly training myself to recognize
intrinsic beauty in these artifacts, and if I see that, then
I think of their esthetic potential -- How will they look in
space? What would be the best angle to view them at? What
can they become with the addition of motion and light? My
interest is not the thing itself because, you know, the
thing is just a thing.
I find
something attractive and intriguing; position it so that
it's sensual, almost alluring, and then animate it; take
hard, cold stainless steel or another metal and then play
off it with light and kinetics and turn it into a warm,
fluid motion that envelops you. There's an intimate
relationship created as these artifacts speak, together with
the movement of light and shadow, of the motions and
emotions of life.
I can purchase
a 420-pound stainless steel dying spool from a mill out of
the stream of stuff in a scrap yard, seeing the hands it has
passed through. I can envision it in space, set to rotating
at a 22-degree angle by the wind or the gentle push of a
person, threads of light emanating through it into its
environment. And somehow, the completed sculpture can
encapsulate the common experiences of getting up and going
to work every day, the relationships within society and
cultures, and even the collective unconscious.
These
undertakings are adventures to me. I don't know where
they'll take me. I get ideas and work with them and some of
them fail, but I get something out of them. And a lot of
times things turn out better than I expected. There's a
feedback from each component of a piece - the material has a
say.
It's a
speculation on my part - monetary, physical, and spiritual,
a speculation that's passion-driven. It's the most rewarding
experience I can imagine