Recently we were in Youngstown Ohio doing our super secret testing of all the commercially available printers we could get for our upcoming 3D printer issue (November 25th). An interesting fellow walks up to me and says “Hey, I’m Tony and I make stuff”. That was enough to capture my interest. He says his studio is less than 5 minutes away and asks if I’d like to go see his work.
Yup.
Jason Babler and I took a trip to Tony’s studio and absolutely loved what we saw. Tony seems to work with pretty much everything, though the majority of things we saw around the studio were made of metal. Some sculptures were static, some moving, some interactive.
I’ll let Tony describe the variety in his work(from his website):
My academic background in formal design enables me to create works both large and small. Over the span of my artistic career, I have developed two main bodies of work. The first includes smaller, more precious objects that incorporate elements of nature and the man-made. The second is a series of works at human scale. Some combine celestial models or compasses with the human form. Most are abstract, steel, and rusty brown: homage to my rust belt town. A branch of my work includes motorized sculptures: one is based on a carnival tea cup ride. The others use motors to spin bowling balls for various effects. I like to instill in my work a sense of play, movement, triumph of the human spirit.
I managed to capture the bowling ball sculpture he mentioned above for a few seconds in the video. A short video simply can’t do this thing justice, the brutal noise involved with getting the ball up to speed is almost overpowering followed up by the most peaceful and prolonged ringing as the ball spins around the bowl. I loved it and I’m pretty sure Jason did too.
After we left his studio, he took me to a local botanical garden to see some of his work on display.
I had a blast checking out Tony’s work and he seemed like a really cool guy. I hope I get a chance to hang out with him again in the future. If you would like to see more of Tony’s work, or even purchase some of it, check out his website.
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