I was moved to make a table for the deck, and with a sculpture about to travel up to the galvanizers, there was added pressure to finish something I could include with the run. 

I had a pile of twisty angle iron pieces six to ten inches long that were the end pieces cut off when I made the rings for the latest Ring Dance (DUET). I welded about half of them together into curving forms roughly two feet long. 

Riffing on past experience working with curly willow and beaver sticks, I fabricated the twisted linear forms into a chaotic base that flows and dances, and finally seem to cross paws and bow. 

I bent another length of angle into a ring for the edge of the top, and cut a circle out of a leftover piece of eighth inch sheet to wrap it around. The outcome is a bit overbuilt, perhaps (at fifty-five pounds) but makes a very stable deck table, big enough for writing, or a couple of glasses of wine and a plate of hors d'oeuvres.  

My daughter said it reminded her of those coastal trees that have grown under the pressure of steady winds, so I call it Windswept Table.

Ring Dance #3 and #4 just came back… 







​from the galvanizers. There is something delightful about the way the fresh zinc coating shines and throws light around—particularly on this set, which has a sine-wave curve around the circumference of each ring. They will oxidize over time to a more classic industrial gray, but this effect could be maintained with a powder-coat finish on top of the galvanizing. 

I produced Ring Dance #3 & 4 as an interacting set, entitled DUET. They stand alone near one another in such a way that from some angles they flow one into the other. From other angles one stands tall to tower and lean over the other, which nuzzles from a more relaxed horizontal position. 

DUET was conceived as a reference to music, and the musical scale. When I was deciding what sizes to make the rings I chose to make seven ring sizes that mimic the frequencies of the A major scale. I started with a 24 inch diameter circle representing 220 hertz. With that as a starting point I could calculate that a 27 inch circle would represent B, at 246.942 hertz, C (261.626 hertz) would be represented with a 28.5 inch ring—and so on. All together DUET is composed of seven “A”s, six “B”s, five “C”s, four “D”s, three “E”s, two “F”s, and one “G”. I haven’t tried arranging that into a musical sequence. Give it a try!

When I began bending the angle iron, the machinery colluded to enhance the musical reference in an unexpected way. I had decided to make an inside bend and as the steel fed into the slip roller, it began to oscillate side to side, forming that sine-wave curve you can see in the photos. It’s not what I imagined would happen—which showed me one more time that the process often has a better imagination than I do. 

"CORE"/ Ring Dance #2 was selected by the City of Olympia for its 2012 Percival Landing Sculpture display. It was  on the plinth at the corner of State and Water streets. That’s the point where one-way State St. doglegs south to join Fourth Ave. Drivers traveling west on State were looking right at the sculpture, rising up behind the safety barricades that keep you from driving into Budd Inlet. 

Following a year of public display on Percival Landing, the City purchased "CORE" for permanent installation just off Fourth Ave E, on Jefferson St. near Bar Francis coffee shop, and Old School Pizza. 

The previous summer, following a month-long popular vote by visitors to the park, the city purchased Dan Klennert’s “King Salmon,” and was moved to its permanent location at West Bay Park. You can see more of Dan’s work [by clicking here] or by driving out to his remarkable sculpture garden just west of Ashford on State Route 706, the road to Mt. Rainier National Park. 


Ring Dance #1/ INCEPTION was purchased by a collector in 2013

I was awake at 1AM thinking about what moves me in sculpture. The current RING DANCE series holds me fascinated, and I was wondering what it is about that. The best answer I can come up with is “form and interplay of forms”, or “form and movement.” 

When I equate interplay of forms with movement I realize I’m making a distinction that defines movement in a particularly subtle way—a way that excludes mechanical motion. Maybe I should come up with a new word, but I can’t think of one. So let’s talk about movement and experience—about perception. 

Have you been to a sculpture park that includes a piece or two that catches the wind to create motion, or is motorized to rotate, or operate—repeating some cycle of motion? We do notice it immediately. That’s because the brain is wired to notice and assess motion very quickly. It’s a survival instinct, at the deepest levels of perception. Something moving might be a rock aimed at my head; I need to know about that as soon as possible. 

Motion might also indicate running water, or a food source. As hunters living in the earth environment we have developed senses and sense reactions that assist in survival here. The tendency to quickly notice when a new motion comes into our field of view comes in handy crossing the street, and it’s very useful to advertisers. Ever wonder why those youths on the street corner are frantically waving signs for cheap mattress stores? Just as when there’s a TV on at the bar, or you are near the flickering flames of a fire—you can’t NOT notice it. Motion—particularly new motion—draws our attention. 

Intriguingly, the same hard-wired feature causes us to dismiss movement that repeats. Once it’s no longer novel the brain begins to rule it out, or see past it—so that we won’t miss the newer motion that could arrive at any second. This explains what happens with those enjoyable pinwheels and other whirly-gigs at the farmer’s market. Very attractive at first, so we buy them. But with familiarity we stop noticing. It’s a good trick, you might say a cheap trick. That kind of motion doesn’t interest me in sculpture. I’m looking for forms that move us in more resilient ways. 

The movement that I look for in sculpture is more closely related to the experience of walking through a landscape. The observer moves, and as the observer moves the perspective flows, lining up different features of the landscape in a constantly shifting dance of perceived relationships. In the forest, various trees line up then move apart; as the angles and curves play in the eye you experience a flow of perception. Same with walking through a redrock canyon, or in a cityscape of various building-forms, separated by streetscapes. It’s the perceptual movement that interests me, the observer’s interaction with form. 

So I look for elements or collections of elements that offer opportunities for interplay with the passing eye. Sometimes a perspective stops me cold, and I want to consider the pleasing arrangement that has come together—I might even come back again and again to watch it line up in just that way. Then I move a little, and another surprise coalesces, from a different perspective. That’s the movement I’m talking about. I’m not always sure what will make it happen, but I love it when I find that it has. 

"INCEPTION"/ Ring Dance #1 came back from the galvanizers this week. It still shouts a little loud with the fresh hot-dip zinc coating, but will quiet with exposure to sunshine and rain. I have been enjoying the sense of play and motion that the piece embodies.
 
I didn’t know in advance what the piece would look like. I made the rings, of various sizes, but then deliberately avoided any planning of how they would be arranged to form the final sculpture. I find that a piece like this has more life when I let it accrue on its own. I just started sticking the rings together, one by one. 

I think of this process as being divinitory. By that I mean I let the piece form itself, while I engage in a ritual sort of play with the elements involved. I apply a loose, fluid set of guidelines as to how I will proceed. The piece is thereby “played” into existence. I discover the final form of the piece by playing with the elements rather than by developing a set design and then forcing materials into the form of the preconceived vision. I wonder what will happen; then I find out.

For guidelines, in this case, I paid attention to attaching each ring firmly to at least two others, considered how to make the piece fully three dimensional—with no front, side, or back—and tried to avoid placing any ring on the same plane with, or parallel to, any other. I didn’t even settle on what would be up or down until I came to the last few rings. 

The advantage of this open-ended play is that the resulting piece arrives from a place beyond my own imagination, from a crossroads of play and purpose, a mix of the limits of material and process, one decision dependent on the results of the last. I arrive in a new territory, not quite sure how I got there. Then I look around.  

RING DANCE #1 is available for purchase, and will be on display at Olympia’s spring Artswalk, April 27 and 28. I’ll be showing with the other “Fire Art” welders from South Puget Sound Community College. We will be on the southeast corner of Fourth and Washington, downtown Olympia. 

[Update: INCEPTION/ Ring Dance #1 was sold in 2013]