The mind of the artist

Here's something to while away the hours at work. Edward Tufte, best known for his lectures and books on the art of presenting information, is also quite an accomplished sculptor. One of his most recent pieces, Larkin's Twig, is the subject of an extended discussion on Tufte's website, and the conversation gives one a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a sculptor/visual engineer. I particularly like Tufte's list of attempts at initial design:

(1) Take a photograph of the 12-inch twig, cut twig out of the photograph, and place cut-out twig image on a landscape photograph. Didn't help. Looked exactly like a cut-out placed on a photograph.

(2) Build a mock-up of the twig out of 4-inch stove pipe. Legs (20 feet and 30 feet long) quickly collapsed under their own weight, despite reinforcing with splines at stove-pipe joints and a lot of duct tape. This experience suggested an impossibility theorem: weight of splines needed to support stove pipe would cause stove pipe to collapse. Lots of left-over stove pipe resulted.

(3) Walk around proposed installation area dangling the 12-inch twig hanging from a stick at some distance from the eyes to simulate real twig. Briefly insightful but gave no sense of volume or of the viewer's physical relationship with the piece, which would require viewer to be 2.25 inches tall. Hard to bring twig, landscape, and viewer together simultaneously.

(4) Build a 2/3 scale model (about 21 feet tall) from tree saplings tied together with threaded rod. Saplings much better than stove pipe. Worked very well, although required a hefty effort to move around to test various locations. Subtle and displaced joints of original twig not replicated by 21-foot tree-sapling mock-up, but no matter. A Cooper's Hawk perched on the top within an hour of placing this model, stayed for 30 minutes scanning the field. Implication: must design final piece to satisfy Bird Factors Department.

(5) Place 12-inch original twig on ground centered underneath 2/3 scale model; try various orientations. This looked a bit strange and provoked comment, but worked well. Some sense of volume was created by 2/3 model along with a sense of accuracy coming from the 12-inch original. Also helpful in assessing shadows.

I don't know if all sculptors approach their work this way, but it makes for interesting reading. Definitely worth checking out.