REPTIRE: RECLAMATION: Millstone Court- "Kong Tower"

RECLAMATION Installation @ Hermitage Museum & Gardens
Location: Outdoors-Millstone Court

THE MAKING OF 'KONG TOWER'

One of the sites that I was particularly excited about was the ‘Mill-stone Court’ at the front entrance of the museum. This courtyard features one of the largest collecections of millstones in the southeast. Millstones of course, are large circular stone disks, that were once used by flour mills to grind grains into grits and flour etc. Mrs. Sloane, being Mrs. Sloane, had ‘reclaimed’ these ancient factory workhorses, as stepping stones, and arranged them in sort of mandala, leading into the center of the design, and then out again. Obviously, this was a potent site. And so it needed a potent piece. And for this I chose a sort of tribute to what I think all would agree is the most powerful and awesome piece of art that Mrs. Sloane ever aquired. And that is the jade Kong, a ritualistic vessel, ‘forged’ somewhere between 400 – 600 years BC in China.
(SHOW POSTCARD IMAGE?)

The piece has a really spooky presence, which I don't mind admitting, I am somewhat afraid of-

it is a powerful and awesome artifact.

So, with some trepidation, I endeavored to make some sort of sculptural ode to this object, which would occupy the center of this mandala..

My design was quite simple.

1) make a tower-like tube, by sewing mountain bicycle tires together,

2) erect this as a sort of a tower, and

3) illuminate the tower from within, allowing the light to penetrate the latex embedded fabric of the tires’ sidewalls, causing it to sing with colorful hues of yellows, oranges, pinks and reds, shining out in between the bands of the opaque, black rubber treads.

4) There was also the thought to top the tower with a Tiresphere. The currators had recognized a compass like quality in these forms, and, with the compass points inherent in the millstone court's design, coupled with the nautical aspect of this natal location, there was considerable creedence to this notion. My suspend this globe ontop of the tower, so that the light shining up through it would light the sphere from below, with a duely dramatic effect...

Show sketch drawing of Kong Tower.

TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Kong Tower presented one of the more vexing engineering problems: one that the pharmasutical engineers at Viagra have been wresting with for years- how to got a long, heavy rubber noodle to stand up straight?...

I have made a much shorter version of this sculpture before, for the base/cone of Atomic Ice Cream, which I installed in University Mall for the first Scrapel Hill exhibtion, in 2008.

For this I had devised a pretty effective system of using about twelve 3’ long bamboo poles to hold the the tube up. The biggest challenge, and subsequently the ‘crowning’ achievement of this design, was, ironically its crown itself. How do you get the heavy tube to stand on these poles?

My answer to this problem was to use equipment that was most indigenous to these bicycle tires, a rim, and spokes. I inverted the spokes, so that their flanged ends, normally holding the hub of the wheel, held the rim, with the help of a nut. These then poked into holes drilled through the nodes of the bamboo. And so then I had some sembalance of a structure that could hang this heavy tube from. The problem was that the top most tire kept on slipping off the edge of the rim.

How to keep this tire evenly positioned upon this rim? Well, once again the answer came from the tire’s native equipment. A uniform bag of air positioned around the wheel, in between and the tire, served to keep equal pressue on all 360 degrees of direction, centering the wheel perfectly on the tire! Behold, the innertube, used in a way that is akin to its native purpose, yet divergent.

So, as beautiful as I thought this solution was, it was devised for a 3’ high ice cream cone, and, I found, to much chagrin, was definitely NOT cutting it for an 8 foot tall Neolithic jade tower of power….

CHALLENGE #1

First off, the height demanded some support, which I had hither to been able to get by without. For this, I tried employing some internal spires, that sculptor Bob of Fresh Fish had once recommended.

I tried and tried these out, with some glimmers of hope. It seems like a very graceful solution, and I still believe that it may be possible to make them work.

However, by the end of a long and precious day, I finally had to recognize that what I had was not sufficiently sturdy, as currently devised. So I decided to step away from it, and sleep on it. And during that slumber time, I came upon a simple solution. And that was a tube of gridded wire fencing, to attach the bamboo poles to.

And with whole lot of fanagaling

eventually, I found that this worked quite well.

Turn off the lights...

and boom.

CHALLENGE # 2

Now that I had my tower erected, and attached to the base (a disk of plywood), the question was, how do I keep the whole thing from tipping over?

This was in fact, THE question, because the Executive Director of the Museum, a tough cookie, had made it absolutely clear that she would not stand for it falling over on any one. And with the museum’s location along the edge of the bay, they can get some pretty

Strong winds roaring through there, I was told. Hmmm. What to do? I didn’t want to guy wire around it, as I felt that would really detract from its presence and power, as a ‘stand-alone’ object.

I consulted Steven, a fellow who worked there in different capacities, who would over the next few weeks prove invaluable to the operation, for his practicle incisiveness.

Stephans suggestion was internal compression. To wire up the inside of the thing, much the way that skyscrapers are held together. This was quite a revelation for me, and I did attempt some version of this, with great results.

However, in the end, I returned to my original approach, which was quite simple- Put all of the weight at the bottom. My model for this approach was the punching bag that you might have had as a kid, that took a licking, and kept on ticking, coming back up for more every time. An opponent from hell- “Why wont this thing just lie down and die”, you might have found yourself wondering. Of course the reason was that it was ‘Weighted and inflated’, in all the right places.

So this one time apponent was now to become this piece’s avatar. Perhaps not the stolid, rigid character the Jade Kong imposes, but possessing a certain quite staying power of resilience , all its own, none the less.

For this base-weighting task, Steven resourcefully recommended some rocks piled up behind the shop, to keep the bay at bay, which worked very well. I had cut a small access door in the fencing to get to the light bulb,

and through this door, I loaded the rocks.

For some reason, this interior scene, this space of a wire cage, loaded with rocks, surrounded by the eerie striped black and tan rubber, reminded me oddly of some cousin operation, maybe moving a komodo dragon by boat. I guess there was the King KONG name element that could have been at play in this fantastic adventure…

CHALLENGE #3

Getting the lip of the tire to lock on to the lip of the rim was just not working with all of that extra tire weight pulling down on the tube. You think its hard for you to carry around that flat tire on your gut? Well I had 20 of them! I could think of a few solutions to this problem, but none that I really liked very much. I knew there had to be a better one out there. (or atleast, I really hoped there was...). So I decided to suck up my pride, and ask Steven. And, incisive guy that he is, he saw straight through it, right down to that perfect solution.

Kong Tower Lamprey..

The trick of course, was to tie the tube, in place, to the rim. For this punched holes in the tire, and then ran zip ties through the spoke holes of the rim.

It worked Beautifully! It was almost as satisfying as the tube had originally been, to see this gasket, so securely secured to the lip of the tire. Function, pure function, can be so fricken gorgeous when it really is just that. I think Buckminster Fuller said something about that….

ARTISTIC CONSIDERATIONS

One question that I came to was, how tall do I make it? I wanted it to be generally ‘on the human scale’, which was one valuable concept that I learned about at the SF Art Institute. As my teacher had pointed out, humans relate to objects that are the size of another human, in a special way, unlike we do to objects of any other size. Part of what I was doing there, at hermitage, was to help reintroduce the permanent collection to the public. So I thought, why not introduce this object on that scale, as a human like figure? Originally, I wanted the edge of the sculpture to be just above eye-level, to introduce that idea of mystery. That you could never see over the crest of that lip…

But as I began to build the piece, and was finally able to see it in its space, I was reminded that this object has an almost larger than life presence. It is forboding. Angry, domineering. In essence, it is an Angry Father, to be feared and respected. And so I decided to make it tower, at 8 feet tall.

I also decided at this point do do away with my idea to place the compass-sphere on top.

It began to feel a little bit ornamental, and sacreligiose. Hermitage Foundation's Jade Kong is a ritualistic vessel, not a pedestal! And as such, I thought it could, and should, stand alone.

INSTALLATION
Next, I had to install the thing.
This involved balancing it on the central millstone (which I might add, is not level).
It also involved digging a trench for the power cord, which I ran from the tool shed to the light at the tower's base. Lucky for me, Public Programs Director, Melissa Ball got on her hands and knees, to dig this trench, so that I didn't have to soil my hands. Thanks Melissa.

The day of the opening, I was faced with a terrible realization. Though I was using an outdoor bulb, I was still using an indoor fixture! (I had only used the piece indoors previously). Lucky for me, Tom caught the mistake (after I'd tripped the breaker several times), and back to MeadowBrooke I raced, finding an outdoor fixture, per Tom's suggestion. Tom, in the knick of time.

Finally getting the piece up there was quite satisfying.