We have been keeping a blog since 2008. It is a chronological listing of many topics related to Wood that Works. You will find information about sculptures, inspirations, other artists, day to day life in the shop. The topics are many and fascinating. If you are an avid follower of David's work we encourage you to subscribe to this blog to receive the regular updates.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014 at 9:58AM I am fairly sure that I would stop and stare - for a very long time!
"Kinetic Rain" Changi Airport Singapore from ART+COM on Vimeo.
I'll have to leave time if I ever travel through this airport!
Monday, November 4, 2013 at 7:13PM It has been quite awhile since I've posted on the blog and for good reason. Marji and I have just returned from a 7 week road trip exploring America. We left on September 5th with few specific plans but several broad goals. One of those goals was to experience any sculpture parks we traveled near. Some folks collect baseball parks, others national parks. We collect sculpture parks. The quest was inspired by our frequent visits to both Storm King Art Center (Mountationville, NY) and Grounds for Sculpture (Hamilton, NJ).
We started with a Google search that ended at a Wikipedia article listing sculpture parks around the world. We concentrated on the USA for this trip! The first park to cross our path was the Scandaga River Sculpture Park in Wells, NY. It was in a remote area near the Adirondacks and we had our doubts as we followed the GPS. But it led us to the beautiful garden of artist John Van Alstine and his studio. It was our lucky day because the artist was home. We had a delightful visit.
Sculpture and Photo credit • John Vanalstine
John told us of a recently published book by Francesca Cigola titled Art Parks: A Tour of America's Sculpture Parks and Gardens, and recommended it as a resource for our travels. We located it on Amazon and had it waiting for us at a friend's home as we passed near Pittsburgh.We used it extensively and adjusted routes to view the parks shared in this book. It directed us to a wide range of parks and wonderful sculpture across America. We saw very little new kinetic work (more info later), but many exciting sculptures.
The book was helpful in locating some extremely interesting parks. Be sure to cross reference things with online resources because some have restricted viewing. Of note, the northeast has the highest concentration of sculpture parks by far and we never knew about a host of them. We didn't visit any of those because we can see them as day trips from home. We have some interesting weekend trips ahead!
Here is a quick overview of a few of our discoveries.
Normade by Plensa at PapaJohn Sculpture Park Des Moines, Iowa
Sequences by Richard Serra at Cantor Art Center, Stanford University
A Flock of Signs by Kim Beck at 100 Acres in Indianapolis, IN
Our trip was exciting on many levels but especially because of the art we saw, both natural and man made. I will continue to share additional information about the various sculptures parks we visited across America in future blog posts. Check back regularly. You might discover a place you need to visit!
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 12:00PM
Some of our favorite places to visit are sculpture gardens including Storm King in NY State. We have started collecting ideas of other places to visit through recommendations and web searching. This is how we stumbled upon The Singing Ringing Tree in England.
Image Source: Flickr.com
This award-winning sculpture is a fascinating combination of man-made metals and nature's breath - the wind. It stands just under 10 feet high in the Pennine Mountains looking over Burnley, in Lancashire, England. This sculpture was enginered by the British architecture firm Tonkin Liu. It is made of glavanized steel tubes that harness the wind to send low melodic tones over the land. Here is an excellent YouTube video about the process of developing and making the sculpture:
Someday when we make our way back to Europe this will certainly be on our list of places to visit. Have you seen The Singing Ringing Tree in person? What were your thoughts?
Thursday, September 22, 2011 at 12:00PM There are many sources of inspiration within the world of art. Here is an interesting use of sculpture and video to present motion and to capture people's interaction with the sculpture.
This project was comissioned by Federation Square in Melbourne. The sculpture consists of twenty-one large triangles. According to it's creators,
"MÖBIUS is a sculpture that can be configured into many cyclical patterns and behave as though it is eating itself, whilst sinking into the ground. The result is an optical illusion and a time-lapse of people interacting with the
sculpture and moving through Melbourne's landmark location throughout the day."
The animation of MÖBIUS took place over two weeks on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday between the May 6th and 20th 2011. Here is the video of the making of the animation video. The process is quite fascinating.
Making of MÖBIUS from ENESS on Vimeo.
The still pictures of the MÖBIUS are also quite striking with their geometric forms and creation of interesting spaces.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 4:18PM I've been exploring some our our "vintage" video from the early 1990's and stumbled on this clip.
The is my daughter Amy's new kitten Jasmine finding all the joys of exploring the home of a kinetic sculptor. The sculpture is called Symphony, one of my few freestanding sculptures. I built it in 1994.
