Bucket Studies

Setting the Sun on Fire

Darin Back

Debbie Donovan


The past few weeks have been spent in the studio editing documentation and creating this interactive sculpture for Grant Harts record release show for his new Record/CD... HOT WAX. The perimeter of the sun was shot out with a super soaker for the intro to his show... the afterglow of the sun remained on throughout. It was a great evening and a fine kick off to an extensive season of touring ahead... Congratulations to Grant and thank you to Darin and Debbie for the beautiful photos...
As well as a link to images by Jay Smiley...

The reincarnation of Ben Franklin

As long as I am busy setting up my new studio and everything is in a big heap... which is pretty much all I could do to clear out space to paint the walls, I figured I would add a new... and by new I mean old... image from a 1982 sculpture to my Creative Archives category. The reincarnation of Ben Franklin was an 8 foot tall conglomeration of Rea bar, Light bulbs.
A tin Bucket and a Glass jar filled with cement... for shoes of coarse... All wired together with bare Copper wire. The idea was to put him on top of a high hill... then Fly a kite from his arm as a Thunder Strorm was approaching and watch him light up!! It would have been so simple, but people started filling my head with all kinds of ideas about how it would need to be on a platform raised up off the ground... and grounded... and a wire cage around it ....and and and... pretty soon it never happened. It was a beatiful piece, I have no idea whatever happened to it. So now I am looking at the future creative vision I have been working on and appreciating the fact that there is still a little bit of Ben Franklin in my heart. I am planning a two year fellowship in which I will create and set sail to three Electric Water Ships. One each for my Father, Mother and Brother. Each ship will be made from a small wooden fishing boat with a sail covered in light bulbs. There will be a generator on board to light the sail. The weathering that will occur during the life of the work is a charachteristic I wish to capture. The possibility of a lightning strike to one of the boats, or rain breaking the hot lightbulbs is very exciting to me.

Blue Print Project

The Blue Print Project that ran from 1995-2006 produced roughly 2500 images created primarily drawing from the subconscious. Most of the images on this site are from this collection. None of the originals however have been color treated in any way, accept for the color of the ball point pen used to create it. The images have become a valuable tool to me in uncovering layer after layer of meaning in my work. This project falls under the category of Life/Art/Work. A series of performance Art related activities that tend to spontaneously take on their own life within mine....

FOUR FLOURESCENTS AND LEYDEN JARS
This piece was hooked up with bare copper wire
at only one end of the bulb
By grabbing ahold of the lightbulb,
the bulb would light up to wherever your hand was
This one was created in 1982, while I was still in College @ the
Minneapolis College of Art & Design

TWIN JARS
watercolor

TWIN JARS
Photo: Grant Hart
If you look really close, you will notice that one of the wires is bare.
This piece was probably created around 1987...
It is one of the few pieces that survived the years...
Kind of like me...
I just dusted it off from the basement the other day.
I am betting when I fill it up and plug it back in it will still work...
Kind of like me!!

INVERTED TRASH CAN
The top can had holes in the sides to let the light shine through
The bottom can shows an x-ray view with a lightbulb underwater.
This piece was made somewhere around 1986

MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE of ARTS 1983 Centennial Celebration
"Live Art Electric"
This piece had me sitting inside of a 5' square plywood box blowing up lightbulbs with a transformer most of the afternoon. The box had several 3/4" holes drilled in the sides. Visitors to the museum were invited to walk up to the box and look in.
The MIA commissioned several performance & sculpture works to be shown outside in the back courtyard... In the middle of winter in the snow. To accomodate the environment, the transformers were completely encased in candle wax 2" thick. A safety measure to protect me against the transformer, & the transformer against the snow.

Inverted Light Jar Totem

Photo: Dan Corrigan

The Worlds First Raining Umbrella

Photo: David (Vid) Gullickson
The Worlds First Raining Umbrella was created in 1983... Constructed with rusted tin cans bolted together in an umbrella frame covered in bare copper wire. The bucket below is filled with lightbulbs under water. To use the piece simply dip into the electrically charged water with the small buket to fill it, then fill the umbrella... it will rain because the cans have holes in the bottom of each can... it has been featured in several exhibitions in various capacities... including a solo show @ Neo Newavo... 1983 Walker Art Center Film/Video installation: de facto(ry) films Curated by Craig Baldwin with assistance of the Walkers Teen Arts Council @ The Soap Factory...2000 & Art-a- Whirl 2004

Cold Water over Hot Lightbulb

Photo: Grant Hart

Midwest Mom

Being that I spent all of my money on diapers and couldn't afford studio space, and the fact that the apartment had old wiring and was not the place to be blowing up lightbulbs... I took a few years off from playing with Water & Electricity and taught myself how to paint...