Now It Can Be Told, Part Four

I just can't get enough of these awesome Cube pictures. I stood there for almost an hour taking these shots, slowly circling the artwork trying to find just the right angle. Turns out that the best angle is head-on to one of the open sides. The lights inside this thing are capable of producing 14.7 million colors, or at least something close to that. I think it's got something like 7000 watts of LEDs in there, all computer controlled, changing every 90 seconds, thus the title of the piece, Pulse.

Be sure to go visit this, and all the other artwork, along the Sarasota Bayfront as part of the fourth annual Sarasota Season Of Sculpture. I met the director of the shindig tonight, so if you see her there, tell her Ernie (with the camera in the dark) said Howdy.

As time permits, I hope to be able to shoot the other pieces in the exhibit. I'm afraid I'm a little prejudiced though, since I had a small part in building this one.

Now It Can Be Told, Part Three

I omitted one small detail about the cube I showed you the other day. It lights up. I shot these tonight handheld. I need to go back with a tripod, I bet I could get some really awesome shots. Not that these are bad. Some of the more abstract ones are really cool.

A Ding Dong Dandy Christmas Indeed

I don't normally talk about what I'm going to share out at Christmas, but I'm so excited that I can't keep this one under my hat. The record you see above popped up in a pile of vinyl at the Goodwill this afternoon. It may be mono, but it's still awesome. I'd never actually seen one in person before. If you don't know why I'm so excited, just wait until Christmas rolls around and check back. You'll understand then...

Now It Can Be Told, Part Two

What does it take to move a sculpture that towers almost 14 feet in the air (And weighs 7100 pounds) from the parking lot where it was assembled to the bayfront for display? A lot of work and a little bit of luck. A mobile crane had to lift the unit not once but twice to get it onto a waiting truck. Turns out that the truck couldn't wind it's way into the lot where the assembly took place, and the weight of the piece prohibited the crane from moving it too far in one pass. So the second move got it onto the trailer.

Even though our shop is in an industrial park, it's not designed for easy truck access. We scraped against trees on both sides on the way out and had to pick plenty of leaves out of the unit later on.

Getting the unit on the trailer was only the first step. Then it had to be driven nine miles down the road while looking for low-hanging wires and traffic lights, driving at a leisurely 20 miles per hour or less. We had a guy in the cab of the truck ready to jump out at any sign of trouble and lift any low-hanging wires that might prove a problem. But luckily the route was scouted out well enough that we didn't encounter any problems. The driver did make sure and try to drive in-between lights, just in case. There are a couple of lifting eyes that stick out the top of the unit that would have done some serious damage to any traffic lights that happened to get in the way. Those lifting eyes were supposed to make it easier to move the unit, but after all the assembly work was said and done, nobody trusted them to support the weight of the piece, so we wound up running straps around the whole thing whenever it got lifted.

About halfway through the trip, I realized that we would drive right by the artist's previous sculpture of a similar design. So we drove on ahead and scouted out a good spot to get both works in the same shot. Look close to the right side of the picture above and you can see a similar white cube, only this time with a red interior. That earlier version could fit inside this new one.

Now It Can Be Told, Part One

For the past month or so, we've been working on a special project in the shop. It's something a little different from the usual industrial sheet metal we usually do, so I figured I'd share a bit of it here at the old blog. Today was the day that it finally got installed on the bayfront in downtown Sarasota, Florida, so I figure it's OK to talk about it now. The giant white cube you see above is a sculpture named Pulse, designed by local artist Christine Desiree (Hi Christine!) and fabricated in our humble Bradenton shop. To give you a sense of scale, each side is 12 feet, the opening in the center is 9 feet, and the base it's sitting on is 18 inches high.

This sculpture was created for the annual show on the waterfront, which runs for about the next six months. They've been installing pieces for the past few days, and there are still quite a few to go. As you can see, this one got a great spot right on the water.

I was quite involved in the manufacture and assembly of this work of art, so I don't have pictures of the entire process, but I do have some I hope to share with you over the next few days. So if you're curious about how something like this comes together, stay tuned, and you'll lean more than you really want to know. Those of you who are anywhere close to Sarasota will want to drive out to the bayfront and see this show sometime soon. It looks to be a promising event. I'm a little prejudiced when it comes to which piece is my favorite, though.

The interior of the piece is filled with free-hanging mirrored plates that move about in the breeze. They also make a lot of noise when the wind gets going. It was rather loud as it got carried down the road on the back of a lowboy trailer.

More For November

This weeks picture is a great shot of Tampa Bay from one of the smaller bridges leading to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. It was mid-morning one day when I was driving North, and I just thought I should stop and get some shots. I was extremely happy with the pictures I got, with the dead-calm water and the great clouds making for a perfect symmetry.