This grid of spheres invites visitors to come up and rotate the spheres to vary the color arrangement.
In its first temporary placement at the Burlington Sculpture Park the work was rearranged at least once every day for over a month, showing that the basic concept was working.
The spheres we painted with 5-6 layers of sponge painting with outdoor house paint. They have lots of pleasing texture.
We learned some things about mirror image flipping on this work: when the spheres with right angles are rotated to the back… the right angles are flipped so it doesn’t form neat square on the back side.
The spheres are coated with clear urethane which gives them fairly good protection from handling.
Each sphere has about a cup of fine gravel inside it. This makes the sphere stay where you leave them when you rotate them. It also makes an interesting whooshy sound as they rotate.
(The spheres are just hard plastic play balls for dogs, painted with house paint.)
Glass artist Jane Jacobson made the first drawing of this layout, showing a horizontal set of bars. This was the result of a family brainstorm session where we first thought of horizontal bars rather than vertical stacks.