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Portrait carousel
For the exhibition Changes of the Delftsche Kunstkring, which will be on June 29-30 in Delft with a couple of my sculptures on display, I have been asked to contribute to a collaborative sculpture with five other artists. The wish was to have a carousel mechanism with portraits which can be turned around.
Here some photos of one of the rotors I made of steel with six sides as a hexagon.
Three such rotors I placed at different heights along a vertical tube.
Then the other five artists started painting: six different heads for the upper rotor, six different bodies for the central rotor, and six different legs for the lower rotor. By turning the rotors one by one, various interesting and funny combinations of a person are obtained.
Lead casting of counter-masses
Some years ago I was working on a nice large balanced sculpture with floating pyramids of stainless steel (see blogs here, here and here), but due to the covid-cancellation of the exhibition the sculpture remained unfinished. On Friday I made another step with the sculpture by lead casting of the two counter-masses of 32 kg each, for which I asked the help of Emile Luijben alias Mastermilo.
The counter-masses are 20 mm thick trapezium shaped plates for which I made a mold of steel. I placed two copper tubes along the middle of the plate to create holes in the plate such that it can be placed on rods. Then the plate can slide along the rods for fine-tuning of the balance of the sculpture, for which in the center of the mold I included a screw-nut.
I collected 100 kg of old lead and wood from pallets for the fire. Then I went to Emile and his friends and in his workshop we made the setup for the casting and melting of the lead. First we made a crucible from an old gas tank. Of course everything was filmed for his youtube channel.
In the meantime the fire was prepared outside, using oil barrels for the wood fire. It was impressive to see how quickly 50 kg of lead was molten, the heat of the wood fire made the lead easily reach its melting point of 327 °C.
After a first failure, the two plates of lead turned out quite nicely. We had some difficulties with the steel mold which deformed much more than expected due to the heat of the lead. That was interesting to learn.
You can watch the complete lead casting process in this video of Emile:
Timeless sculpture
During the last month I have created a new large balanced sculpture, which I named 'Timeless'. The sculpture is based on my earlier sculpture No Time, however 20 times larger - almost 8 meters high - with some minor modifications.
These are the materials that I used: wood, threaded steel rods with nuts and washers, and grey paint.
This is one of the two parallelograms assembled. Of a parallelogram the links of each pair of opposite links have equal lenght.
I made a steel frame to support the sculpture and added the two pillars of which the tallest is 4 meter high.
This is the assembly of the sculpture, placing the parallelograms on the long central links...
... and when placed upright, this is the final quite impressive result. At first I didn't realize how large it would become (the materials in the first photo do not suggest something so large) - my atelier is not even that high - however I love the monumental appearance. And because it is balanced, it can be easily moved by hand into any position.
With respect to my earlier sculpture No Time, here the central rotational points are located above one another instead of next to one another and with one pillar in the front and one pillar in the back, the sculpture can move freely all around, which for this sculpture is more fascinating. The next step now is to make the sculpture of stainless steel.
Kunstroute Leiden
For the Kunstroute Leiden 2023 I was invited by Charlotte Icke-Lemmens to create an exhibition at the Alien Art Gallery in Leiden, shared with Vincent Icke. I was immediately very enthusiastic about their illuminated home and very pretty garden. I selected 8 sculptures, among which 6 that were for the first time publicly on display.
This photo shows an overview of the exhibition inside, with in the back the always successful sculpture Two Men Late at Night of 2005.
The sculpture Between Heaven and Earth of 2021 was placed centrally and the sculpture Hug of 2022 on the side.
I was especially pleased to notice how well the Hug sculpture was praised: "It is impressive that the cold and heavy material bronze is able to radiate so much sensitivity and warmth."
The new sculpture No Time of 2023 was placed on the wall near the entrance where many visitors could gather and move the balanced mechanism by hand.
Outside, the freshly finished Plumage I Flamingo of 2023 was placed in a colourful flowerbed with visitors moving it into a variety of poses ...
... while nearby the sculpture Freedom of 2023 was placed in a cosy open space in the grass.
To attract attention, the sculpture Between Heaven and Earth of 2011 I had placed in the front of the garden near the road, welcoming all visitors.
The last sculpture on display was 'The Three Cheerers', which was still work in progress and unfinished. The exhibition was an opportunity to test the sculpture and to try out the interactive actuation by the visitor.
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