Flock: A sculpture about murmuration is complete and installed at a beautiful location in Napa valley.
This work draws inspiration from the murmuration of birds. The goal was to create volumetric forms out of stainless steel that exhibit constant motion and change of motion, and like flocking birds, maintain a visual irregularity. A wind powered mobile, Flock counterbalances one sail with a stone and both becomes the counterweight for the other. The complex geometry yields ever-changing and surprising visuals. A big part of the inspiration is a hunch, based on recent work, of how far I could push CAD to actually build what I envision by pushing my knowledge of materials and weight to the limit.
As we were building it, we realized that we could use birds themselves as the structural stiffeners for the volumetric sails. The result is much more like a flock of birds flying in space than my first ideas, which had a lot of necessary structure.
The sculpture stands over 30′ tall at its peak and will be built from a combination of stainless steel, galvanized steel and stone. Not as clearly visible is the use of high-strength hardened and tempered steel, the large diameter 7075 aircraft aluminum, and a whole series of custom jigs that allowed the sculpture to be built and balanced.
It is my hope that this becomes a series, I have many variations on this theme that I would like to explore.
