Wait! (2019)

Sculpture

Stainless steel, spray paint, 6.5’ x 3’ x 3’

Class: Systems and Processes, Fall 2019

For our second project we had to “disrupt the stability” of a system, so I chose to approach it literally and make a piece having to do with balance. In my initial brainstorming I was inspired by Alexander Calder, whose sculptures are very dependent on physics and incorporate 3D space in an unconventional way, so I wanted to make something with a similar goal.

At this point in the semester, I had been struggling with a romantic relationship and an uncertainty about my academic future, so my mental state was relatively unstable. I saw from Calder’s wire sculptures that he was able to create beautiful but complex stories and emotions from simple “sketch-like” figures, so I challenged myself to do the same and express the complexity of my instability with a single wire. I had never worked with metal before, nor made a piece of this size (it’s about 6.5 feet tall, see me at the bottom for proportion), so the process was much harder than I expected. It is made of 7 6ft steel rods, which I bent with my hands and body and welded together, and it requires the support of a wall to be balanced.

In my first year I discovered I love to make interactive work, and I mostly carried that passion out digitally. This year, I’ve been challenging myself to do less digital work, so with this piece I also wanted to explore analog interactivity. This piece is interactive because the viewer can tap the hand and create a heavy breathing in the figure.