My portfolio of small, exhibited works, in chronological order.
All the artworks are kinetic and operate in about 500 lux. That light level is more than a typical home interior (say 200 lux), but less than gallery lighting (say 1000 lux.)
All are lightweight, a few tens of grams.
Solar Chime
In the 2016 “Dynamic” show at Studio Channel Islands Gallery in Camarillo, CA.
My early attempt at a solar chime. The sound is very faint, and it can stick, that is, it can require adjustment.
A glass solar cell balances a yellow capacitor. In the middle, the shaft of a pager motor is suspended by a nylon line. The twist of wire on the top arm slides to balance the mobile. The chime is an aluminum rod from a wind chime.
Three works in the 2016 “The Mobile Show” at The Carrack Gallery, Durham, NC, now closed. The show was a unique, memorable display of mobiles. Many thanks to the two, volunteer curators of the show.
Instagram vestiges of the show.
Light Meter
Many solar spinners on a carbon fiber tube.
The title is a pun. A light meter is a device you used to use to measure light intensity to set the exposure on a film camera. A meter is a metric unit of length. The work is actually four foot long, not a meter long.
As installed (you can also see “Solar Chime II” and someone else’s work) :
Solar Chime II
My next attempt at a solar chime.
A three level Calder mobile. The yellow thing is a capacitor, the striker. It is on the lowest level, and moves in a curve called an astroid
It doesn’t stick. Sometimes the striker completely misses. Other times the arm hits the chime (as pictured), and bounces off with no sound. Only occasionally does the striker hit the chime just right.
I donated this work to the gallery, and a patron was kind enough to buy it. I told her it would last many years, and ones like it are still working after five years.
Inversion
It displays symmetry: two mobiles, one hanging from the ceiling and one floating from the floor (using helium balloons.) So in some sense it is conceptual art. That is, the idea is important, not being pretty.
As it turned out, as performance art it also displayed destructive chaos: the work did not survive opening night. It was destroyed by gusts when the gallery door was opened. I had assembled it for the first time at installation.
Not a solar mobile. But it would be if the balloons were black. Then it would slowly move as sunlight struck different parts throughout the day. Like a solar balloon.
The work was ephemeral. Mylar helium balloons won’t stay inflated very long since helium atoms are small and leak. The silver, air-filled balloons are still in my studio, inflated after five years.
Event Horizon
In the 2017 “Digitalia” show at Barrack Art Center in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Only six inches wide. In the photo, blue paper covers the solar cells, yet it still moved and blurred.
An exercise in packing hanging spheres into a shape, a cone. Its one thing to stack cannonballs, its a different problem to hang them by threads so they don’t interfere.
Lighting Field”
On display in November 2017 at the offices of United Arts Council in Raleigh, NC.
Six mobiles, each eight foot long, slowly spinning indoors under ordinary lighting.
The title is a pun on the landscape artist Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field. Both works are a bunch of sticks, but my sticks move.
Eight foot carbon fiber tubes with a pager motor, solar cell, and electronics in the middle. Hung by fishing line attached to the shaft of the motor.
The pager is too small to torque the mass of the rod. The motor just needs enough torque to wind up the fishing line. The line slowly unwinds and moves the mobile.
See the thin black sticks almost invisible against the clutter of the ceiling? You had to be there and pay attention to their subtle movement.
Video of the prototype in my living room
Bell Pagoda
In the “Multiples” show in 2017 at Visual Art Exchange Raleigh, NC.
The VAE is a wonderful organization supporting the art scene in Raleigh. They certainly helped me.
The theme of the show was to display 25 related instances of art. I stacked up solar-powered chimes in plexiglas stands. The concept was a stack of six layers, but it was tippy, so it was installed as two stacks. Each stack three layers of four chimes in a cross. Chimes are a mix of gongs, brasse bells, glass bells, aluminum rods, , and aluminum tubes.
It was a crowd pleaser. You had to be there and hear it.
See below for a closeup of one unit.
One-person show “Solar Mobile Variations” for the month of August 2019 in the “Lab” front gallery at Visual Art Exchange in Raleigh, NC.
Works shown previously, see above:
- “Light Meter”
- “Solar Chime II”
Works not shown previously:
Whisk
Three solar-powered, dual-shaft motors hung on a common axis. In other words a stack form of a mobile. The weight of the solar cell, capacitor, and PCB board is balanced by a stainless steel rod.
The shaft of a dual-shaft motor sticks out both ends. Here, the shafts of adjacent motors are connected by fishing line. When a motor spins (intermittently), it winds up the line above and below. Then the line unwinds, and slowly turns the case of the motor and the attached stainless rod.
The stainless rods differ in diameter and thus stiffness. Thus each level droops in a different inverted catenary curve.
Moire
Similar in construction to “Whisk”, above.
Here the stainless steel rods are all the same stiffness. They hang symmetrically, from their center. But the center of each rod is still offset from the axis of the work, to balance the solar cell.
Here there are two kinds of motion: actual motion and motion of the Moire effect.
When many parallel lines cross, they can form a Moire pattern. Here, when the moving stainless rods are roughly parallel, the Moire pattern they form also moves, faster than the rods themselves.
Bell Pagoda” (one unit)
This is one unit of the larger work “Bell Pagoda”, an assemblage of similar units.
Here the “resonant element” is a glass bell, from a “Furin” wind chime that I dismantled.
Contrast with “Inner Chime” below, where the clapper is inside.
Inner Chime
A solar-powered, motorized clapper inside a glass bell.
The clapper is a hinged pendulum that swings out to strike the bell.
Unlike the earlier “Sun Chime” it can not stick.
Simpler and more compact than a Bell Pagoda unit.
After George Rickey
Similar to “Lighting Field” above.
Here:
- there are two sticks (only one shown)
- the sticks are four foot long
- only the motor and electronics are near the middle
- the solar cell is at one end
Thus the mobile is asymmetric.
Inspired by George Rickey. A master of the ball bearing. One of his stabile works is similar, two chopstick-like stainless rods mounted on a post by ball bearings near their middles. I suspect he would have done solar mobiles if they had been invented in his day.
Fireflies
Solar powered electronics and LED’s. Each should blink every ten seconds. Units communicate with each other and attempt to synchronize. They may take hours to synchronize, if ever.
Some firefly insects synchronize. They see each other’s blinks, and adjust their own blinking to synchronize. Fireflies are self-contained, living organisms, powered from their environment.
Here implemented in silicon. Units communicate with Nordic brand Bluetooth radio chips. Powered from their environment by solar cells. Indoors, the power is so little that the units must sleep most of the time. The technical problem is to synchronize their waking periods. Easier if they talked to a central clock, but like real fireflies, they don’t.
The next, outdoor version will store energy during the day, and blink only at night. In the gallery, they got too much light, and the design was to shed excess voltage by blinking more often.
A work in progress.
Solar Earring II and Solar Origami Earring
See wearables
Solabile Three Levels
Looks like a Calder, but powered by light, not by wind drafts.
Here all the levels have the same components, but in different places. Calder mobiles would typically have a large and heavy decoration in the top level, so that the mobile reached out farther.
At the “Activation” kinetic art show at Brookline Arts Center, Massachusetts, April, 2020.
During the pandemic.
Two works shown previously:
- “Inner Chime”
- “Whisk”
Light Cubed
At the “Illumination” show at Cameron Museum of Art, Wilmington, NC, December, 2020.
A wonderful show despite the pandemic. The brochure shows many beautiful artworks.
Not a solar mobile, but a solar, virtually kinetic lamp.
A rule of the exhibit was that you must use, and only use, a provided LED lamp, plugged into an outlet. And kinetic art was not allowed. So I did not use motors, but used solar cells that powered more LED’s. So I was fighting authority, to create a work that used other light sources, and that seemed to move.
The green LED’s have solar cells that gather light from the central LED lamp, and blink when they can. Virtually kinetic, in the sense that blinking LED’s seem like motion.
Once again, a static image does not do it justice.
My artist statement explains the technology, the efficiency of photovoltaics solar cells, and the political statement the artwork makes.
The title is a pun. Cubed means “to the third power. The three powers of light:
- the sun provides the original light to the power company (either through solar panels or from coal from fossilized plants in sunlight millions of years ago)
- the LED lamp plugged into an outlet provides the next light
- the freestanding solar cells and green LED’s provide the next light
It illustrates that solar cells and LED’s are closely related, in opposite directions. One takes light and gives electricity, the other takes electricity and gives light. Three flows of light, and two flows of electricity, with conversion losses. The original light is millions of times stronger than the green LED light.
