"Wisp", a Stainless Steel Hanging Sculpture

"Wisp" is built to turn right:

"Wisp" is three and a half feet tall and one and a half feet wide, weighs one and a half pounds. The suspension, a doubled stainless steel wire with a stainless ball bearing at the top, allows "Wisp" to swing, sway, and turn, and "Wisp" does take advantage. The big bottom grabs wind from any direction and pulls the piece counter-clockwise, slowly and majestically in light air, faster , even frantic in bigger breezes.

"Wisp" is inherently a steel spring, and resonates with fast or slow repeated quivers or gallops when disturbed, whether or not it is turning.

Indoors, 'Wisp" is a quiet neighbor, responding delicately to the nuances of movement in the surrounding air, letting you know what your environment is doing without being intrusive about it.

Indoors or out, "Wisp" is a chameleon, reflecting back whatever colors are in view, but softening and blurring and sliding them around.

"Wisp" 's (that's as hard to write as it is to say!) moving shadows condense the action down to two stark dimensions. Fun to watch.

There's a little rider in some of these photos. This is Ryder, who was born to do that.

"Wisp" does embody the qualities I want in my sculpture: purity of line, simplicity, and elegance. However, anything can go too far. I found it a little too stark; not quite enough happening. So I took a chunk of bamboo, carved Ryder and tried putting him aboard. He's slotted to attach most anywhere, but comes off easily. When you own "Wisp", you can glue Ryder to a favorite spot, toss him away, or keep just fooling around trying things, like me.

"Wisp" shows best against a plain background; the delicate rising curves can be lost against busyness.

This sculpture is weatherproof except for high winds, and fits in either indoors or out. The wire is the probably correct length for hanging from a point about eight feet up.

"Wisp" is unsigned and unmarked.

The final finish was an all over hand scrub using new coarse grit emery cloth. With all the strokes kept parallel to the edges, this brushed satin finish gives a grain to soften and slide the reflections. It also means that if any blemishes ever happen, they can be removed with coarse emery cloth stroked along the existing grain, and the erasure will be invisible.

Still images miss the essence of a kinetic sculpture. Moving images help, but they are total memory hogs so we will make it your choice. Here's a five megabyte (barely two revolutions) home movie of "Wisp" turning in jump mode:

Jump, "Wisp"

"Wisp". . . . . . . . . . . . .$ 980