Virtual Studio Visit!

Enough with the petty violence against Tom Friedman and whining about high school not being genuine after all. It is time once again for a Virtual Studio Visit!

Let's see... If everything works out as planned, it's going to go next to the Hudson River. Working title is River Like A Muscle, but I know that the syntax of that sucks. That it winds up being pornographic.

I'm a good writer, you'd think this would make it easy for me to title my work!

Right now it's about halfway. It's about 8 feet tall, 16 feet long, and about 6 or 7 feet wide. It can't get much bigger, but I want it to get much, much bigger. Don't you?

Of course, it's tires, but unlike the Middlebury piece, it has no armature or structure of any kind, so its relationship to the ground should (hopefully) keep changing as more tires squeeze things around more.

You can see how at first I was too conservative and put the railroad ties too close together, so that they snuggled eachother in tight pretty quickly. There's very little movement left there. But then I started figuring out that the payoff is in leverage. The height of the tie + the distance the tires have to flex over = total movement.

Ideally, there should be a lot of Total Movement. But there are practical concerns. Right now, it's not safe. Yet. (It will be, but there is still too much Total Movement...) And there's getting it on a truck. I don't want to pay for another oversize load, so it simply must stay under 8' wide and 30' long.

Comments

[paula]

good stuff
tell me, or is it top secret,
how do you get the steel off the tires
so they are workable?
i've not seen your middlebury works before...i can't help but to think of beautifully veiled women when i see it even though i know that isn't at all what it is supposed to represent.
just my take, for whatever its worth.
love the rr ties too.

[21st Century Plowshare]

Veiled women is a cool reference.

The steel is still in the tires. There's no getting it out, really.

[Michael Konrad]

I assume you have some sort of outdoor exhibition in mind since you mention putting it next to the Hudson River. Will that be a temporary exhibition? I'm just curious what you will do with a sculpture that large after your residency if you don't have a permanent exhibition space for it.

Looking forward to seeing how this turns out in the end.

[21st Century Plowshare]

Hi Michael,

It is a temporary exhibit--Peekskill Project.

I am similarly curious about what will happen to it, but I am sure everything will turn out OK.

Anyone out there with a backyard in the tri-state area who wants a cheap sculpture in 2009?

[a christian]

for what it's worth, I skimmed over the title and was thinking "mussel" rather than "muscle."

"mussel" played nicely with the clenching black form in the sculpture.

looking forward to where this goes.