Some years back, I was asked by Mark and his wife Jane to consider building a medium scale work for their house. I agreed to come and look and found an artful pile of BMW rims in the spot where the final sculpture would go. We toured the grounds, making a show of considering other sites, but it was pretty clear where a sculpture was needed.

The process of building the final work, was a lot of fun. Mark is a cardiologist whose mother was deeply involved in modern art in Denver. So he had a good sense of both the artistic process and an appreciation of the technology it takes to make a work like this . We started with a knife edge for the pendulum bearing, but that didn’t work and we moved to a double radial bearing which worked wonderfully and lent the work an amazing motion. This work is an example of a compound pendulum, where a weight above the pivot point less than the main weight acts to make the pendulum’s cycle longer. The closer these weights are to equal (in relation to the distance from the pivot) the longer the cycle is. I would love to explore this on a much larger scale sometime in the future.

The other really interesting thing is that this piece carries with it a certain amount of physical risk. You can build up a tremendous amount of energy in the work and if you stand in the wrong place, it will whop you, hard. Maybe it is due to the level of liability that a cardiologist lives with every day in our amazingly litigious society, but Mark had no problem with that aspect, saying that his girls are all grown up and their house is at the end of a cul-de-sac so no one should be messing with it anyhow. Of course, I am half expecting a phone call from Jane if any grandchildren appear…..

I did not anticipate the work being able to do a full revolution, it was a happy accident that required us rebuilding the base to raise it enough to clear the ground.

One fascinating thing about building a large scale work in CAD space is the incidental creation of all kinds of interesting visual artifacts. A three dimensional object must be both defined mathematically in a way that can be processed by a machine as well as represented on a screen in a way that is both understood and manipulated by a human eye/brain. The designers of CAD software have created all kinds of methods to help in this process. These include varying line-weight to help the eye understand hierarchy (something also considered critical in better art-schools) as well as the creation of all kinds of reference lines/planes and other visual aids to help make sense of the object being created. If one is building objects that are more than simple shapes and other than right angles, things get very complicated quickly.

I am currently working on a large wind activated commission that among other things will have “sails” made up of hundreds of stainless steel bird-like forms. These bird forms will be welded together to mimic a flock of birds. But in order to keep the sails light and strong, we need to force these forms to create a complex curve as this is the most effective way to utilize the strength of metal in thin sheet form. You might think that car bodies are all curve because it looks cool, but the real reason is that if you stamp a sheet of metal into a complex curve, it becomes remarkably stronger and rigid for the weight and amount of material.

So as part of this commission, I have been working with a brilliant guy named Dallas to find a way to piece together a form of many individual pieces in a way that forms a complex curve (think about the surface of a sphere). As metal doesn’t want to behave this way, a method has to be found to force it into position. The method we have been working on is to break the curve into triangles (like a geodesic dome) and put small holes in the bird shapes that correspond with the corners of the triangle. By aligning the pin holes, it should be possible to build a large, complex curve that is very light and strong.

For some reason, it makes sense to keep a file of all of these forms stacked on top of one another as a layered line drawing. Here is our first test run of the bird forms (about a third of one of the sails) with all of their reference holes as a stacked line drawing, this is the file we are using to laser cut the forms and will be building a full scale test soon to see if it works as planned. You can see the alignment holes as well as the larger holes that will be used to attach the pieces to the support frame. Each bird form is unique and, like a giant jigsaw puzzle, must be in its proper place and orientation for the system to work.

-Einstein

Short video clip about the installation of Rockspinner 6 at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, Kinetic Sculpture Show.

Sculptor’s art teases gravity

The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Page E-1

By Katie Leslie

kleslie@ajc.com

Moving five tons of rock is easier than you might think, at least if Zachary Coffin has something to do with it. The Atlanta-born Coffin is the artist behind Rockspinner, a series of kinetic sculptures featuring skewered boulders that can be turned by hand or powered by solar energy. Rockspinner6, built in Atlanta, is now on display at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, one of 30 pieces featured in the garden’s “Sculpture in Motion: Art Choreographed by Nature” exhibit through the end of October.

“It’s kind of interesting — it seems to have a lot of crossover appeal,” he says of Rockspinner6. “You know people will go to a museum of modern art and say ‘My kindergartner can do that.’ I haven’t had that kind of response.”

But just how did Coffin, raised in Virginia-Highland and schooled at the Cooper Union in New York, become interested in boulders?

“There was some point back in art school where I realized the thing I wanted to do is build giant toys,” he said.

He got his first real chance while working at the Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, when a construction crew offered him a boulder they unearthed. That rock became his first piece, Finnibar, now on display in his sculpture park in Atlanta’s West End neighborhood. He completed the first Rockspinner 11 years ago in Birmingham and continues developing his technique.

“I’m always courting gravity and have definitely had my misunderstandings with gravity,” Coffin says, declining to get specific. “I’ve had some mishaps that looking back I thought, ‘That could’ve ended my career.’”

Uncrushed, Coffin forges ahead from his studio in Atlanta. The married father of two is now working on “The Horn Section,” a 36-foot-high rock and steel sculpture to be installed next spring in the Castleberry Hill’s Cleopas R. Johnson Park.

Having his work displayed in a public venue is the best of both worlds, he says.

Kinetic Art

Botanical Garden goes on the move with marvels in motion

The Atlanta Journal Constitution

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Page E-1

By Katie Leslie

kleslie@ajc.com

On a recent day at the Botanical Garden, children crowded around a skewered boulder, their petite frames pushing and spinning the massive 5-ton rock created by Zachary Coffin.

“I love this because it keeps them from climbing on everything else,” said Kim Cresswell, mother to one of the children pushing the stone Coffin pulled from Lithonia.

The piece is one of nearly 25 works showcased in the garden’s spring exhibit, “Sculpture in Motion,” featuring kinetic art nestled among the growing landscape. While most of the pieces are wind-powered, others transform from sound, magnetics, water, touch and solar energy.

Coffin’s piece, Rockspinner6, is the only sculpture by an Atlanta artist, and moves by touch and sunlight.

“It’s always been an interest of mine to engage viewers who are not necessarily ‘art lovers,’ which is why so much of my work is public,” Coffin wrote in an e-mail. “The ABG is a great place for people to encounter sculpture that is outside of their normal understanding of sculpture, and hopefully plant new ideas about art, particularly in the young.”

Blending botanical beauty and art to attract a wide-range of viewers was precisely what executive director Mary Pat Matheson had in mind when she joined the garden in 2002.

“There are lots of ways to get people to the botanical garden. No 1—exhibits,” she said. “And in a museum with no walls, it’s a lost easier to view art here and not necessarily need to know anything about it.”

While the garden can count on flora fanatics, it uses exhibits to attract people with other interests. The 2004 “Chihuly in the Garden” exhibit by acclaimed artist Dale Chihuly drew a record-breaking 288,000 visitors. Along with the 2006 Niki de Saint Phalle exhibit, the Chihuly brought in art lovers and gardeners alike, while last years Dave Rogers’ “Big Bugs and Killer Plants” exhibit was popular with young families.

While Matheson doesn’t expect “Sculpture in Motion” to break Chihuly records, she does hope the show, touted to be the largest exhibit of its kind in U.S. history, will draw a wide audience, from parents and children to engineers curious about a sculpture’s mechanics.

Idea born in Atlanta

Unlike traveling exhibits, “Sculpture in Motion” was born within the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s gates, specifically, in exhibition manager Catheleen Cooke’s mind. When considering a number of concepts for the spring 2008 show, Cooke had a eureka moment.

“There was a common element of movement and interactivity, and how nature interacts with art,” she said.

She then began researching kinetic artists, eventually calling Brigitte MicMacker of Sculpturesite Gallery in San Francisco. With MicMacker, Cooke toured artists’ studios in Northern California to select the pieces. MicMacker, who has a background in landscape design, became the guest curator of “Sculpture in Motion.”

“It was kismet,” Cooke said.

The exhibit opens with a landmark piece in kinetic sculpture history, Cooke explained — “Two Lines Oblique” by George Rickey, largely considered a pioneer in kinetics.

The late artist’s 34-foot-tall Y-shaped stainless-steel sculpture, on loan from the High Museum of Art, stands at the garden’s admissions entrance. From her second-floor office window, Matheson watches its shiny pointed arms with a span of 43 feet move slowly in the breeze.

“It’s moving with such simple elegance,” she said.

Except for the Rickey sculpture, all of the exhibited art is for sale, ranging in price from $3500 to $120,000.

Cooke and crew used maquettes — models — of many of the sculptures to test how they would react in Atlanta’s weather.

“A lot of artists live in coastal areas or in a valley, so guess what, they have big whopping winds,” she said.

Most of the pieces sway and transform in Georgia’s breezes, save for a heavy cylindrical sculpture called, ironically, “Dance With the Wind” by artist Ralfonso. Movement aside, the piece has its own appeal, and is a maquette of a 30-foot-tall piece commissioned for the Beijing Olympics.

Nearby in the conservatory’s desert exhibit, a thick black liquid, charged by magnetically charged microfine particles, coils itself into the shape of a spindly witch hat. Holding its spiky shape, the liquid sculpture suddenly collapses, and begins drawing upward again into a cone.

This piece by artist Sachiko Kodama is nestled in what garden workers call “the spiny forest,” a dry, cactus-covered area designed to keep wandering fingers at bay.

Another puzzling sculpture, “Self Organizing Still Life, Terra Incognita” by David Fried, resides in the Fuqua Orchid Center. There, in a room padded with orchids, balls of varying sizes rest on a thick granite slab — until moved by sand.

“The kids stand in here and scream all day,” Cooke said. “We try to discourage that.”

Art Show

“Sculpture in Motion”

Runs through October at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; until 10 p.m. Thursdays; closed Mondays. Adults $12; seniors and ages 3 to 17 $9: members and children under 3 free. Cocktails in the Garden held 6-10 p.m. Thursdays. 404-876-5859, www.atlantabotanicalgarden.org

—TEXT—-

WORLD SCULPTURE NEWS

AUTUMN 2003

THE UNITED STATES

Temple of Gravity

The Temple of Gravity, a rock and steel sculpture designed to explore its relationship to the force of gravity and installed in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert as part of the Burning Man arts festival, is scheduled to move to a new temporary home in Desert Hot Springs, California, in December 2003.

The Temple of Gravity is an 80-ton public art project designed and fabricated in southwest Atlanta, comprising five 17,000-pound granite slabs angled to hang between 6 and 12 feet above ground level. The supporting structure is a steel dome which also bears the weight of a suspended fire cauldron. The design is open to the sky, without a roof or walls. Its wood-burning fire provides both light and heat as a metaphor for the structure of the earth.

This sculpture is the brain-child of the Atlanta-based sculptor Zachary Coffin and created in collaboration with Keith Helfrich, Corbett Griffith, and Paul Jorgenson, who formed Gravity Group, LLC to fund the work, began with US$20,000 commission from the Burning Man arts festival.

Susana Lombardi, owner of We Care Spa, Inc. has purchased 5% of Gravity Group, LLC, in exchange for the opportunity to exhibit the sculpture as the artistic centerpiece of her holistic healing retreat. As part of the deal between Lombardi and Gravity Group, LLC, the Temple of Gravity will be installed at We Care Spa for three years from the last week of December, 2003. The arrangement also leaves open the possibility of installing the sculpture at additional locations during the period, with an eventual return home to Desert Hot Springs. “We wanted to build in a degree of flexibility in case the sculpture is called upon to travel again.” Says Keith Helfrich of Gravity Group, LLC.

Well I guess it is nice to have your work pictured on the front of the NYTimes Art Section. Captioned “art” this image ran alongside a fairly irrelevant article about how Burning Man isn’t perfect. The kind of article the mainstream press has been running about Burning Man for years….

Producing a large-scale sculpture in the Nevada desert involves challenge far beyond shipping and materials setbacks — it’s difficult to stay focused when the cars painted like fish and topless women on bicycles keep passing by. “Everything takes five times longer out here,” explains Zachary Coffin. An Atlanta artist, Coffin is also the manager of Gravity Group, which designed the Temple of Gravity for this years Burning Man festival, a 30,000-person gathering celebrating freedom of expression.

During the weeklong annual event, Gravity Group’s 80-ton open-air dome hovered above the playa, ironically appearing to defy the force being glorified. Five massive slabs of rough-hewn granite hung from the structure’s 24-foot-high steel frame, topped by the LEDs that sent blue lights dancing down a clear acrylic tube at exactly 9.82 meters per second squared—the acceleration of gravity. On chilly desert nights, a wood-burning fire pendulum became the installations most alluring feature.

Missed the festival and looking for a place to worship gravity’s mystery? By the end of the year the Temple will move to the upscale We Care Spa in Desert Hot Springs, California.

—Meaghan O’Neill

Interior Design

December 2003