Millennium Bookball
The Northport Public Library commissioned me to create a unique Millennium
Bookball sculpture for its newly expanded Laurel Avenue building.
The
work is a spherical assemblage of wooden "books," five feet in
diameter,
hanging in the two-story catalog area of the library. The books are
made
of various hard woods, with the titles and authors carved and gold
leafed.
The sculpture was assembled at a
community
assembly event something like a barn-raising, but for art.
Geometrical Structure
The Millennium Bookball is constructed of sixty "books," carefully
arranged
in precise geometric relationships. Some patterns to look for
are:
There are ten books in each of six different woods. The walnut
books are the darkest; they form an "equator" which encircles the
sculpture
in a horizontal plane. Looking straight up from below the
sculpture,
those ten books can be seen to outline a type of 5-pointed star.
The maple books are the lightest, they can be seen to outline a
5-pointed
star of the same shape, but tilted. The other four
woods---cherry,
sapele, bubinga, and purpleheart---also each form a 5-pointed star
tilted
from the horizontal. Books of the same wood have their spines
parallel.
There are 32 bronze "donuts" connecting the books. The books
which
meet at any donut form a type of "propeller" There are twenty
3-way
propellers and twelve 5-way propellers. Each book is part of two
propellers: a 3-way propeller above the title and a 5-way one below the
author. The same book is perceived as going clockwise in one
propeller
but counterclockwise in its other propeller.
The books outline thirty rhombic windows into the sculpture's
interior.
The mathematical name for this pattern of rhombi is the "rhombic
triacontahedron."
The donuts are the corners of the rhombi. Each donut is directly
opposite another of the same type (3-way or 5-way). If you align
yourself so you can look straight through the holes of any two opposite
donuts, you will be positioned to discover a number of other geometric
patterns in the sculpture.
Community Art Project
This is a community project in three different ways:
-
It reflects the community's reading tastes. Each of the sixty books is
inscribed with the title and author of one of the
best books of the century, as determined by the Northport community.
-
It is funded in large part by contributions from individual community
members,
through a fundraiser arranged by the library. The initial funding
was through a New York State Council for the Arts individual artist's
grant,
administered through the Huntington Arts council.
-
The actual assembly of the work was a
community event. The sculpture was designed in such a way that a
large
number of people had to hold the components together in relative
position
and slide them towards each other simultaneously.
In addition, an unveiling, reception, and millennium party was held on
December 12, 1999. Here is a picture just as I started to unveil
it. Up until then, it was wrapped in black plastic, as if I
collaborated
with Christo.
Development
This sculpture took over a year from concept to completion, and during
that time, it evolved considerably. My initial design was for a
smaller
piece, in which the books were tightly interlocked via slots. If
you study my original paper model, shown below, you will see that all
sixty
books have the same pattern of five slots. I planned on forming
each
from a single board, in a six-wood color pattern.
I wrote a proposal to the New York State Council for the Arts
describing
the sculpture and community assembly idea, and was awarded an
individual
artist's grant. With the state grant came encouragement to seek
co-funding
to build a larger project. I took the idea to the Northport
Public
Library and the administration and board of directors enthusiastically
supported it and arranged for a community fundraiser to support
it.
This larger budget allowed more design options. I ended up
choosing
a more open form, with cast bronze components and more intricate
books.
I relied on computer modeling to examine a range of
possibilities.
Below are two images of the final design.
The above image is centered on a five-fold donut, and the next looks at
a three-fold donut.
To give a sense of its appearance with books, I made the following
sketch,
which was the all I saw of it until the
day of assembly, when it finally became real.
If you have a VRML plug-in installed in your web browser (which
allows
it to display virtual reality 3D objects) you can also look at a
3D virtual reality model of the sculpture.
Acknowledgments
A sculpture of this intricacy can not be built by a single
person.
This project is made possible in part with public funds from the New
York
State Council on the Arts, administered by the Huntington Arts
Council.
In addition, many individuals contributed greatly, both in the fund
drive
and in direct help to me. In roughly chronological order: Sara
Bluestone
of the Huntington Arts Council gave me excellent guidance in writing
the
proposal. MaryEllen Moll, community services librarian of the
Northport
Library, was my main liaison, who organized meetings, wrote press
releases,
did publicity, arranged parties, and many other behind-the-scenes
things,
e.g., arranging for the hook in the ceiling. Stephanie Heineman
(Northport
Library director) and Eileen Minogue (assistant director) championed
the
project for me, presenting it to the board of directors, and provided
other
support. Marty Rebholz provided good engineering advice on the
structure.
Lee Holcomb let me use his computer-controlled router for carving the
titles,
and freely shared his expertise on gold leafing and finishing.
Jamie
Swan provided all kinds of good advice, and machined the metal parts,
drilling
and tapping the holes in the donuts and milling the slots in the metal
rods, all with great accuracy. Tom Pappel resawed one-inch boards
down to quarter-inch. Victoria helped with the layers of varnish
that lie below the gold leafing. Cooper directly worked with me
in
applying the gold leaf. Rob Comforto made a video of
everything.
Marty Rebholz, Jamie Swan, Walt Zurawski, and Tony carried and hoisted
its 150 pounds up to the ceiling. And, of course, a great many
people
collaborated at the assembly event to put the sculpture together.
Thank you one and all.