Gravity

If Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Serra and Buckminster Fuller walked into a bar, I for one, would like to have been there...

Lately Iv'e been thinking about energy and its properties of transference. This is an essential phenomenon for me to reason with on a near daily basis in the studio between strategic hammer blows, setting clamps, welding or setting up pivot points in kinetic piece. And then there is always (hopefully) gravity, well the feeling of weight anyways and properties of a massive object, but essentially there's one force to rule them all, all of the time.  

As Neil deGrasse Tyson puts it "gravity is the only force that only acts in a single direction and yet has an attraction that reaches very very far away. The forces of gravity can also be increased or decreased depending upon the presence of other bodies (mass) in space.

One of the many aspects of working with a constant force, especially with steel, is that it can be used in strategic ways like pressure/friction, counter balancing, tension. Steel in its many available features and forms, demonstrates itself so incredibly well in both compression and tautness, exemplifying an utter disregard of what seems possible only to prove it adheres to the laws of physics and furthering my expectations of what it can accomplish next in a structure.

Take the work of Richard Serra in contrast to Buckminster Fuller, and for that matter Tyson, they produced extremely different yet incredible works based on the language of physics and gravity.

Throughout the building of a physical composition, things can start to get heavy pretty quickly, so this generally involves some forethought, so I tend to work from my annotated sketches.

I wouldn't exactly equate this to the free flowing layers of the painters' brush and moxie but my premeditated approach,  does mostly keep me from getting pinned against the work table.  

- JPemberton