Backbone

         Darwin defines survival as the continued existence of organisms that are best adapted to their environment. I would add that a major, if not the most important, component of that adaptation is also the control of the resources needed to sustain that organism. For humans, a certain amount of sustenance is constantly needed in the forms of water and food. We need to protect our bodies from the elements, in varying degree, with clothing. Shelter is also necessary for our protection from the elements and for our possessions (i.e. beds, food, tools etc.) from those who would take them from us.

         These facts are indisputable in my mind, as we know medically that humans cannot go for much longer then six days without water before they die of dehydration, and only a few weeks longer without food to reach the same result. We also know scientifically that hypothermia begins after body temperature drops only 1.8 degrees from the healthy temperature 98.6 degrees F. and results in death shortly thereafter if the conditions persist. Simply put, having control over the resources to stave off thirst, hunger and the cold is the key to basic survival. Without those resources, human life cannot persist for long.

         Survival is the one thing that every living organism has in common. It is also therefore, the one thing that consequently, all living things compete with each other for. When I think of life in these terms, I see human existence in a whole new light. Historical events like wars and protests, organizations like religions, nations, borders, walls, laws, taxes and anything else that ever confused or upset me in some way now hold much greater meaning and significance.

         I have come to recognize people as tribal. That is, living in accordance with some kind of group setting. Thousands of years ago, when mankind was trudging through its earlier stages of evolution, the tribe was a means of comfort, support and ultimately survival. People had certain roles to fulfill in the tribe and if it was organized well enough, it provided the group with the means to live a safer life than those who were on their own. This was an invaluable relationship for humans as there was of course no means to get the resources needed for survival but by the most hands on and difficult methods. The group dynamic allowed the delegation of jobs such as hunting, gathering, food preparation, etc.

         Today the population of these tribes has exploded to exceed billions. Tribes can no longer be exclusively defined as one’s clan or extended family. The new definition of tribal living has been stretched to its limits as it now must include terms like club, team, profession, neighborhood, city, state, nation, philosophy, religion and so on. In that context the idea of survival must also take on new meaning, as some tribes no longer have to hunt and gather for food in the traditional ways. Some tribes die off and others assimilate into larger tribes. With each additional person another layer of complexity is added to the perpetually evolving struggle to control access of that which is needed to survive.

         This is how I have come to think about current events. Why are wars fought in the Middle East? Why are corporations trying to buy water rights throughout the world? Why are the prices of scrap metal soaring? I am sure there are many details in the answers to those questions. The specifics of each situation might set them apart from one another, but when examined through the lens of a larger scope however, I believe that they are much more similar than we may think. Tribes fight for resources. Some fight for land, some for water. Most of them, in the last 50 years, have fought for oil. Some do it with conventional warfare, while others use more subtly inflicted, but no less effective financial methods. All of them one way or another are fighting for the control of resources though as do all of us in our own tribes on a daily basis.

         I would argue that this system is as old as the first stages of humanity and took stronger root in our culture as the population of the tribes grew. Controlling access to a watering hole guaranteed survival for most of the tribe. It also laid the foundation for a system of power (if they could enforce it) based on territory. Trade and commerce were concepts that naturally followed, as were theft and punishment So, it was the tribe that controlled the watering hole in the beginning that in turn became powerful. This may have been the birth of politics, as we know it.

         Over the course of time, biological and technological evolution, people have created the system we see today by which power and status is based on the amount of vital resources a group (government or private) controls. This is of incalculable importance to me as my work is an exploration of survival and its long and vast reach into our society and culture.

As I entered my thirties I began to notice what, at first, were subtle changes in my personality. My priorities shifted a bit, curiously bringing the notion of survival to the forefront of my mind. My sense of time also became more acute. The mental tug that I had always felt in the back of my mind that instructs me to consider the meaning of things increased into a strong, steady pull. All of these changes coincide with my increasing thirst for knowledge and continue to bring me closer to a state of urgency to understanding the world I live in.

What strikes me is that the more I read about history, the more sense things make now. That may seem like a no-brainer to most, but I am at a cusp in my life where things are starting to take new meaning. An astrologer would call this my Saturn return, or the point in one’s life where the planet Saturn completes one pass around the sun returning to the point at which it was when the person was born. While the purpose of this post is not to argue one way or another for this belief, the world of astrology stands behind the idea that one undergoes a re-birth of sorts and emerges from this with a different understanding of the world.

Carl Jung was another who believed in a change in consciousness around this age. He used the term, “Individuation” to describe a successful union between the conscious and the unconscious. According to him, this happens when an adult begins to alter the direction of energy that once flowed toward the objective efforts of young life such as education, career and family, to the subjective, inner world of the self bringing inevitable changes in thought.

My point is that with age, a bit of experience and some perception I have begun to recognize patterns in history and human existence in the forms of behavior and politics. It is these patterns that I can also link (directly or indirectly) to most, if not all, major events in the history of humankind.

Where does this leave me with my artwork? How does this affect the rest of my life, my politics and the decisions I make everyday? These are hard questions to consider as I wrestle with the notion and fear of becoming more conservative as I get older.

My latest work however is an attempt to reconcile all of this as I reflect the things I see through this newly acquired and indefinable lens. It is also an expression of my curiosity and a call for answers from those viewers who might know more than me on the subjects that I remain fascinated with.

After working on projects like the Steampunk Treehouse and the Neuron Chamber, I was so moved by the prospect of making things move, that the direction of my work shifted. This came at an important juncture for me, as the conceptual nature of my work has recently taken leaps and bounds to coincide with this notion of moving sculpture.

This is my first attempt at integrating kinetic elements into my work. While I am a trained metalsmith, my expertise does not lie in mechanics. A wise person once told me that when using kinetics, “To secure the mechanism first.” This has continued to resonate with me and is especially relevant now as I realize just how much forethought is needed in designing machines, no matter how simple they are.

I am now at what I believe to be a critical point in this process as the individual elements of this piece are nearing completion and must now be assembled into a functioning whole.

In the last post, I showed you a preliminary design for this piece that had images of the Founding Fathers of the United States lying in a row at the bottom of a large steel rectangle. I also included an image of John Adams surrounded by a chalk drawn Gothic frame. The Gothic imagery is an attempt to insert religious tones into the piece by conjoining the history of these men with the ideas of sainthood.  

The kinetic elements of this piece include a series of bronze rods that move in a reciprocal motion between the small Gothic frames (holding the “Fathers” heads) and the back round imagery, which has yet to be made. To make sure that this action is smooth, I cut six pieces of small tubing at 4” to act as a guide holding the rods straight as they passed through.

For this reason these tubes need to be rigid and secure, so I welded them to a cross bar that also serves this piece in other ways as:

1. A table for the gothic frames to mount to.
2. A barrier separating the mechanics from the rest of the piece.

Gravity pulls the rods down behind the frames and through the cross bar to meet a series of cams that drive them back up.These rotate on a shaft that runs the entire width of the piece and is actuated by a hand crank in one corner. There will be more about this later when I reach these steps in the construction.

The last thing I did before I left the studio, was heat and bend the bronze rods into small curves. I felt that a straight line moving up and down might get lost visually, but seeing a squiggly line do the same would be more dynamic and interesting.