Washington's Chicago-Sized Calder

Is this the biggest secret in Congress? I grew up in this town and I had no idea there is an eight-story tall sculpture by Alexander Calder inside the Hart Senate Office Building, not until I came innocently upon it yesterday, like walking through the woods and coming upon a dinosaur.

Source, 2008 Aluminum, 77” h x 19 x 24.

Smoke

Smoke, 2009. Stainless steel, copper wire, steel nuts and screws. This work was exhibited at 1460 Wall-Mountables at the District of Columbia Arts Center last summer.

Virgule

Virgule, 2008. Aluminum, 8” h x 18 x 9.

Trophy of Lost Time

Trophy of Lost Time, 2009. Venetian blind parts, 9” h x 35 x 7. This work was exhibited in Reused and Recycled, Art League of Alexandria, 2009, juried by Joe Hicks.

Mental Map at City Hall

City of Alexandria Mental Map was my first sculpture juried into an exhibition (Paint Alexandria 2007, juried by Lenny Campello.) Later it was in Art in City Hall (shown above) at Alexandria City Hall, juried by Barbara Wolanin. It is a framed photograph of a temporary sculpture that was installed in Oronoco Bay Park on 5/24/2007, mounted behind a shaped remnant of the polystyrene foam used in the sculpture.

Fallen Fan at Artomatic 2009

Fallen Fan, 2009. Aluminum, 22” h x 23 x 20. The title came last (I may have been influenced by having slept several months under a ceiling fan for the first time in my life.) Installations at Artomatic are done without air-conditioning to save expense. When air-conditioning in the unfinished office building finally came on, it blew many things over. Fallen Fan was true to his name.

Flat City details

Flat City is made up of nearly identical shapes (a few are shortened) cut from aluminum sheet. The three-dimensionality comes from a slight angular deficit around the four-way crossings, just like the angular deficit a paper cone has around its vertex.

Flat City at Artomatic 2009

Flat City, shown here on exhibit at Artomatic 2009 in the Navy Yard neighborhood of Washington, DC, is a fragment of locked biaxial weaving (tabby weave.) Usually I have been interested in triaxial weaves, but biaxial weaves have a classicism suggestive of this city. From a mathematical point of view (Akleman et al. 2009) there is negligible difference between triaxial and biaxial weaving, they can be as mixed just as freely as squares and triangles can be mixed in a tiling.

Spirals of Foliate 2

The two spiral ends of Foliate 2 are approximately hyperbolic spirals, the shape of a spiral that grows from the outside in, like the tendril of a vine. Steel rather likes this shape when the profile tapers to a point, indeed, the inspiration of Foliate was metal scrap left behind by a pair of tin snips. Organic form is not such a stranger to an industrial material.

Foliate 2 at U.S. Botanic Gardens

Over the summer, Foliate 2 was part of Growing Inspirations, a show sponsored by the Washington Sculptors Group at the U.S. Botanic Gardens during the summer of 2009. Rusted steel, 20" x 12" x 7" h.