Kinetic Sculpture – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Incomplete Metamorphosis

Posted by Cindy on April 25, 2013

Apr 252013

Argonne Park
18th Avenue between Geary and Anza
Inner Richmond

Artist Joyce Hsu combines her personal memories of summer adventures with a complex skeletal structure similar to an airplane to create two unique artworks for Argonne Playground. These two sculptures, Firefly and Dragonfly each grace one of the two entrances to the park.

Hsu explains that the title, “Incomplete Metamorphosis” is a scientific term describing a particular type of life cycle of insects. Hsu has adopted the term, but not its specific meaning. She has created her own meaning, seeing in the term a way to describe her insect sculptures: “Not only are they flightless, but they stand motionless, while their skeletal design requires viewers’ vivid imagination to complete.” She has expressed the hope that “many children will be able to share the joy and amazement I found with dragonflies as a youngster.”

Joyce Hsu (who has been in this website before) received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1998. For the last ten years, she has exhibited throughout California and increasingly internationally. Currently Hsu is working to complete a Master of Architecture degree at CCA in San Francisco, where she has also received numerous awards for her work. To date, Ms. Hsu has received five public art commissions, including an upcoming major work to be installed at the San Francisco International Airport.

Incomplete Metamorphosis was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission in accord with the city’s public art ordinance, which provides for an art enrichment allocation equivalent to 2% of the construction budget of a new or renovated civic construction project. Funds for the artwork were provided by the Recreation and Park Department. The two sculptures were commissioned for $25,o00 in the 2006-2007 budget.

Kinetic Sculpture in Dolores Park

Posted by Cindy on January 10, 2013

Jan 102013

Mission Dolores Park
The Mission District

Mission Dolores underwent a $17+ million, much-needed and beautiful transformation in 2011 and 2012. Part of the renovation was this kinetic sculpture.

The sculpture, by Lymon Whitaker is 23 feet tall.

Lyman has been a practicing sculptor for over 40 years, with a unique knowledge of materials and their application. The past 19 years have primarily been focused on creating Wind Sculptures, which are all produced by hand. The Wind Sculptures are innovative and artistic with a high degree of mechanical integrity.

Lyman feels that by placing the sculptures in settings dependent on natural elements for movement, opportunities are provided for participants to think about their surroundings. He has said that his sculptures are organic and natural like vegetation and are enjoyed best in interactive settings where they are viewed over time.

Lyman received a Bachelor of Arts with an emphasis on sculpture from the University of Utah in 1978. He still resides in Utah, often retreating to his off-grid yurt for inspiration.

Aero #8 by Moto Ohtake Spinning in the Richmond

Posted by Cindy on December 7, 2012

Dec 072012

851 27th Avenue
Richmond District

Aero #8 by Moto Ohtake – 2012 – Stainless Steel

Inspired by the natural elements on both macro and microscopic levels, aero #8 is a self-contained wind driven system that creates an infinite number of movements in response to changes in weather patterns.

Moto Ohtake was born in 1952 in Tokyo Japan. He holds a BFA from Nihon University in Tokyo, Japan, a BFA in sculpture from the Academy of Art College and an MFA in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institue. He is presently an instructor in sculpture, three dimensional design and furniture design at De Anza College in Cupertino, California.

The video is actually of Aero #5, however they are very similar and the video will give you a good feeling of how they move.

This piece was commissioned by the San Francisco Arts Commission for $48,000.

George Rickey and his Kinetic Sculptures

Posted by Cindy on October 23, 2012

Oct 232012

Sydney Walton Park

Two Open Rectangles
Eccentric Variation IV
Triangle Section
by George Rickey 1977

George Rickey has several kinetic sculptures around San Francisco.

Rickey (1907-2002) was one of two major 20th-century artists to make movement a central interest in sculpture. Alexander Calder, whose mobiles Mr. Rickey encountered in the 1930’s, was the other. After starting out as a painter, Mr. Rickey began to produce sculptures with moving parts in the early 50’s, but it was not until a decade later that he achieved the kind of simplicity and scale that would make him an important figure in contemporary art. At that point, he began to produce tall stainless-steel sculptures with long, spearlike arms attached to central posts. Rotating on precision bearings devised by the artist, the arms were balanced so that slight breezes would cause them to sweep like giant scissor blades, tracing graceful arcs or circles against the sky. (From his NY Times Obituary)

Hidden Sea near Moscone Center

Posted by Cindy on September 22, 2012

Sep 222012

321 Clementina
SOMA

Hidden Sea by Ned Kahn 2000

Recipient Organization: Tenants and Owners Development Corporation

In late 1999, artist Ned Kahn collaborated with the staff of the Tenants and Owners Development Corporation (TODCO) and the residents of their housing projects to create a public artwork for the exterior wall of Ceatrice Polite apartment building at Fourth and Clementina Streets. The apartment is in the Yerba Buena redevelopment area.

Ned Kahn’s public artworks encourage people to observe and interact with natural processes. Upon talking with the advisory group, his concept for this project became to create a piece that captures the feeling of watching a field of tall grass blowing in the wind. Both Kahn and John Elberling, Executive Vice President of TODCO, felt that the residents would benefit from being offered a glimpse into a natural phenomenon, a bit of calm and beauty in the context of their increasingly dense and bustling urban landscape.

The artwork, “Hidden Sea” consists of 6,000 small aluminum “leaves” mounted in an aluminum framework and hinged to move freely in the wind. The individual leaves measure three inches by three inches and are held by low friction bearings. The entire 40-foot tall by 25-foot wide artwork reveals the shape of the wind and creates the intended impression of waves in a field of metallic grass. The mirror-like surfaces of the aluminum leaves reflect light from different parts of the sky and the surrounding buildings.

“Hidden Sea” was fabricated by Ace Precision Machine in Santa Rosa and assembled in Ned Kahn’s studio. Benji Young and Michael Ehrlich of Young Rigging in San Francisco installed the artwork at the beginning of the year 2000.

Ned Kahn writes of the context for this project:

For the last 15 years, I have created public artworks that use wind, water, fog and other natural processes as their primary medium. Many of these artworks were intended to reveal a hidden or unnoticed force in the site such as the air currents or the ambient light from the sky. The design of a number of these projects was based on an aspect of the natural history or geology of the region that was not commonly known. My artworks often function as small-scale “observatories” in that they frame and enhance our perception of natural phenomena and create places that encourage contemplation.

Watching the Wind at the Randall Museum

Posted by Cindy on September 6, 2012

Sep 062012

Randall Museum
199 Museum Way
Castro

The plaque that accompanies the piece reads:

Charles Sowers is an artist whose practice links art and science. Here wind currents activate over 500 aluminum arrows to reveal the ever-changing ways the wind interacts with the building and its environment. “My work presents actual physical phenomena, often of striking visual beauty, that draw people into careful noticing and interaction”

This piece is from the Collection of the City and County of San Francisco commissioned by the SFAC for the Randall Museum Funded by the Public Utilities Company.

According to a February 21, 2012 S.F. Chronicle article

The new exhibit took four years to make, required dozens of prototypes and tests, and ultimately uses 612 individually balanced aluminum arrows spaced 1 foot apart on architectural facade material covering the side of a local museum.

I spent over a year-and-a-half designing and testing wind arrow designs,” he said. “I first prototyped arrow designs in paper. Then I made a prototype panel fitted with six different arrow designs and mounted it on-site for a year of testing.

“I also mounted arrows outside my apartment at Baker Beach, which was great for the intense wind. And I even held them outside my car window. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to mount them on the building.”

Sowers also spent considerable time hand-balancing each arrow, studying the possibilities using computer-aided drafting software. “Balance was a big part of the design,” he said. “Important, and tedious. I balanced every one, working in groups of 25 arrows. My shoulders ached.”
He also had to decide whether the “V” of the arrow’s wings should slope toward the wall or away. “I learned that the V sloping out caught the wind and made it vibrate or oscillate. It was not behaving correctly, so they are sloped inward.”

Sowers, who is 45 and earned his bachelor’s degree in anthropology at Oberlin College – where he studied physics early on – has long been fascinated with the tapestry of nature, whether the swirling of fog, the formation of ice, the unexpected rippling in a mud puddle, or the effects of water and wind on sand.

The Randall Museum was the inspiration of Josephine D. Randall. Ms. Randall received her Masters degree in zoology from Stanford University in 1910. By 1915, she had organized one of the first Girl Scout troops in the United States as well as one of the first Camp Fire Girl troops. She went on to become San Francisco’s first Superintendent of Recreation, a position she held for a quarter of a century. In 1948 she received an honorary Doctorate from the University of California. Under her direction, the San Francisco Recreation Department achieved national recognition as one of the most outstanding services of its kind.

One of Ms. Randall’s long-term goals was the establishment of a museum for children. In 1937 her vision came to fruition. Simply called the “Junior Museum,” it originally opened in the city’s old jail on Ocean Avenue. In 1947, Ms. Randall shepherded a $12,000,000 bond issue for recreation capital projects, including a new museum. In 1951, the museum opened in its current facilities on a 16-acre park over looking San Francisco Bay and was renamed the Josephine D. Randall Junior Museum in honor of its founder.

Bernal Heights – Odonatoa

Posted by Cindy on October 7, 2011

Oct 072011

Holy Park Playground

Holy Park Circle

Bernal Heights

Odonatoa by Joyce Hsu

Bernal Heights is a wonderful area that has some of the cities best weather. This sculpture sits on top of a delightful park that has views of all around the city. Bernal had its origin with the 1839 Rancho Rincon de las Salinas y Potrero Viejo Mexican land grant It remained undeveloped, though, until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Built atop bedrock, the hill’s structures survived the temblor, and the sparseness of the development saved much of Bernal from the ravages of the firestorm that followed. The commercial corridor of Cortland Avenue filled in with shops as the pastureland on the hilltop was developed for workers’ homes during the rapid rebuilding of the city. Some of the tiny earthquake cottages that the city built to house quake refugees still exist in this area. During World War II, the area saw another population surge of primarily working class families. During the Vietnam War, the neighborhood was known as “Red Hill” for the anti-war activists in shared households and collectives who moved in among the working class families.

Born in Hong Kong, Joyce Hsu received her BFA from the Mount Allison University in Canada in 1996 and her MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1998. She works out of Oakland and creates all kinds of mechanical sculptures.

This kinetic sculpture of painted stainless is one of many insects that Joyce has created. It was commission by the SFAC in their 2006-07 budget at a cost of $14,500.

I would like to add this addendum to this post. The blog Bernalwood reposted this and received a comment from Eugenie Marek. Her comment is here :

My memory is a bit fuzzy. Here’s what I remember.
When Holly Park was being renovated, the Arts Commission invited 5 or 6 residents to meet to consider from among projects that had been submitted for this location.

It was a difficult choice because the submissions were all imaginative and well executed. What made it even harder was that two of the artists lived in Bernal. We were given some direction by the Arts Commission facilitator. Because Holly Park is so windy, we looked to select something that included movement. This artist’s work was unique enough to convince us.

Unfortunately, the Odonatao ran into trouble because it was just too responsive to the wind! It was quite something to see when the parts were in motion. The artist tried several times to slow it down, and finally disengaged it.

I’ve always been sad to see it frozen– but it is neat to look at! Certainly one of a kind.

Thank you Eugenie.