Kevin just finished a sculpture called Autumn Mobius, which he thinks is probably 1 of the best sculptures he has ever made.
That got him thinking, “If I made a list of my top 5 sculptures, what would they be?”
Kevin shows more views of the kinetic sculpture Autumn Mobius, first pointing out that the shiny part of the sculpture is indeed a mobius. This whole sculpture is made of aluminum.
Its leaves represent those of the trees right in the area where this sculpture will be installed, and it has a boulder for a base. The different colors are all automotive paint applied by Kevin Caron with a spray gun. Some of the detail work was done with an airbrush, some with a pinstriping brush, which he used to put the veins in the leaves. Kevin is so proud of how this sculpture turned out.
Another sculpture Kevin really loves is called Top Knot. Top Knot is a trefoil knot. Its history goes very, very far back and has been used in some religions. It was actually called a Celtic knot early on. This sculpture is just Kevin’s take on the form.
The sculpture is made out of steel and is very heavy. Before he put it on the pedestal, the sculpture was actually about 4-1/2, maybe almost 5 feet tall.
Kevin loves the shadows this sculpture creates and the technical aspects of trying to put it together, to get everything to come out square and straight and true. It was so much fun to build.
Top Knot was a public commission for the city of Surprise, Arizona, and it now lives out in front of city hall, in a the place of honor.
Another sculpture that Kevin would put on the top 5 list of his favorite sculptures is Charged Particle. It is a truncated octahedron. “I love geometric shapes,” he says. “I love playing with geometry. I love the look of it. I love the shadows that it casts, the simple complexity of the sculpture.”
It’s just pipe and balls put together in a certain way. How difficult can it be? “Oh, my God!,” says Kevin. “It was SO difficult!” It was very time consuming, with everything having to be cut exactly to length, within a thousandth or so – everything had to be exact. And then he had to tack it all together, reaching way down inside of the sculpture to make little welds that made it come out straight and square.
What a labor of love and what a labor of banging his head on the workbench saying, “Why?! Why?! Why?!” But he just loves how this sculpture turned out. It’s a pride and joy, which is why he has it his home.
Another geometric shape he did as a sculpture early on was called Torrent, which is an umbilic torus. An umbilic torus is basically a 3-sided mobius strip. If you start on one side and go around once, you wind up on a different side; you have to go around 3 times to get back to where you first started.
This sculpture was a suggestion from a friend on one of the art forums he was on. She threw it out there as a challenge, and Kevin thought, “What the heck! Let’s figure out how to make it.” This sculpture turned out so well he had people fighting over it in an auction at the Phoenix Art Museum when it sold. Now it is now at the home of one of the biggest art collectors in Arizona.
Kevin loves this sculpture. He loves the look of it. He loves running his hand around it, the shadows that it cast. He even blew up this design to 9 feet in diameter. That sculpture, Wherever You Go, There You Are is now in front of Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts, a museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Says Kevin: “I love my job!”
One of the other sculptures that he loves to just sit and stare at sometimes, especially if the light is coming in the window just right so the sunlight can light it up is a sculpture called Amethyst City.
You look at this sculpture and think, “Is it really old? What’s going on here?” It looks like a ruined castle. All the walls are there, all the ramparts. It looks like an old city that’s been vacant for hundreds or thousands of years left in decay. Some of the delicate features created by the 3D printer it was printed on are little walls. Some of these partitions are so thin, so delicate. You can see your hand right through the sculpture when the light shines through. Later on in the day, when you get it away from the sunlight, it turns almost black. Kevin loves creating sculptures like this.
So those are Kevin’s top 5 sculptures from the past 20 years. He hopes you enjoyed them, too.
Before you go, catch Kevin checking his math (and ego) ….