My name is Charlie. I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. My kinetic art is inspired by roller coasters. If you look carefully, you will find elements of various coasters within the twists and bends of the marble runs that I create.
Please take a look around – I will be posting pictures of my work as it is completed. Feel free to email me with any questions.
charlie
about my art
This art has many names (rolling ball sculpture, rbs, marble roller coaster, marble run, etc). They are fascinating sculptures that move marbles around curves, through loops, up and down hills, and eventually to the end of the track. My sculptures are made using stainless steel rods, carefully hand bent and then welded into position.
The beginning – Each sculpture starts as straight rods made of stainless steel that are 12 feet long. I use both 1/8″ and 3/16″ stainless rods, depending on what part of the sculpture I am building. I begin at the top of the sculpture and begin bending the wire, checking it periodically with a marble to ensure correct track spacing and banking in the curves.
Welding – My sculptures are all TIG welded. I permanately fuse the stainless steel together by instantly heating the piece to several thousand degrees – the metal becomes red hot and melts together. TIG welding uses an inert ‘shielding gas’ (in my case, Argon) to protect the stainless steel from being contaminated while it is heated to these extreme temperatures.
The frame - Sometimes I begin a sculpture with a frame and build around it – other times I begin a sculpture with the track and build a frame to suite it. In both cases, a majority of the sculpture is bent and welded while attached to the frame. This makes it more difficult to work with, but also ensures that the track is working properly.
Curves – Curves are one of my favorite elements in a rolling ball sculpture. To me, watching the marbles quickly change speed and direction is mezmorizing. I do not use additional ‘gaurd-rails’ in corners – I prefer the clean, elegant appearance of a perfectly banked curve without the added clutter of more rails. Creating gaurd-rail free corners is challenging and takes considerably more time, but to me it is worth the effort. I bend curves starting with the inside section of track, then I bend the outside to match. This process is tricky and it takes me a while to get both tracks to match. Entering and exiting sharp bank corners adds another layer of complexity to getting things just right.
Marbles - Like fingerprints, all marbles are different. The variation in size, weight, texture and shape have an impact on how a marble interacts with a sculpture. I learned this the hard way with my first sculpture. It was too precise and it only works on a perfectly flat surface with a specific marble (the one that I used to test it as it was being built). I now test each sculpture with a variety of marbles as I build them. Even still, I can usually find a marble that is too light or too heavy to make it through the track properly.