Pow!

Opening Reception of Studio B Sculpture Invitational - Cincinnati 2006

Positronic Neon by Russ RuBert

Information Systems (Observations of Human Creativity, a Relational System Design Dialectic) by Nathan Hamilton and Jay Wilson

The Limits of Spoken Language: Conversation by
Jarrett Hawkins

Positronic Neon by Russ RuBert

Neon Wired In Place

Cincinnati Installation

We pulled into Cincinnati with the new Positronic Neon sculptures at about 4:30 a.m. Saturday night/Sunday morning, but Russ was already hard at work by 10:30 a.m. This sculpture installation will be on display as part of the Studio B Sculpture Invitational for the International Sculpture Conference that starts on Thursday.

Here you can see the hand-bent and welded aluminum framework that Russ has built. Fine copper wire is threaded through custom stand-offs on the aluminum to suspend the neon inside the frames. He is using all vintage neon that has been salvaged from old signs which was designed to lay in two-dimensional patterns. Recombining the neon into new and three-dimensional patterns requires quite a bit of planning to be able to support the neon without putting stresses on curves that will fracture the fragile glass.

The base of the frame is temporarily covered with paper while wiring the neon in place, but underneath the paper are electrical transformers and motion sensors that will trigger the neon to light as people walk by the sculptures.

Choosing which pieces of neon to wire to which circuits can be tricky -- not only technically, but asthetically, since there are several colors and designs that read in different dimensional planes.

Neon Positronic Brain

On Monday Russ installed his newest sculpture at the Washington University School of Medicine -- he calls it the Neon Positronic Brain. It's a crazy sculpture with all kinds of different colored neon lighting up at different times.

The sculpture is viewer activated by three electronic eyes that read whenever someone comes into the building. There was lots of excitment from the students and faculty as he was installing it.

This month he was profiled in 417 Magazine as "the Mad Scientist of Sculpture," and looking at the big Jacob's Ladder that sparks across two stainless steel columns running through the middle of the sculpture makes the title seem appropriate.

It was a little harrowing, driving the sculpture there in 14 degree weather and uncrating it outside in that cold, but worth it -- the sculputure arrived undamaged.