17”h x 7’dia
ANDREA DAVIDE Talks About This Tabletop Art Sculpture
Davide’s ongoing fascination with time takes a turn from her preoccupation with the past in her colorful gear art sculpture, Steel Embrace, as she begins a new focus on present day living and social interaction in relationships.
In this fully kinetic sculpture, Davide contrasts the cold, yet contemporary feel of steel with the rich, warm colors as she considers contrasts of public versus private sensitivities.
The touch of a finger initiates a succession of movement, setting all gears into motion; each gear transferring its kinetic energy to its bordering gear, provoking motion; slowly, leisurely, definitely. All movement, as life, is visible from the outside, yet remains protected; separated from the world by its glass barrier.
Steel Embrace is characterized by many of the same features one might find in her RoundTimer work, but Davide deviates from her norm, somewhat, in that she focus more on the nature of the workings of interpersonal relationships. While many of her works route the viewer on a somewhat historical path through humankind’s epic struggle with its contentious dealings with time and all of its trappings, Steel Embrace offers more of an introspective reflection, enticing the viewer to make a connection to the emotional sensitivities that are active within us all, though rarely examined or explored.
The brightly colored inner workings of Steel Embrace are a fairly distinct departure from many of her other works which have tended to focus on the more industrial visual qualities of the utilitarian items she usually focuses on, where the gleams and sheens of metals of various types are contrasted against each other. Brass, copper, and the other metals highlighted in a RoundTimer have been replaced with the vibrant colors one might find in a Lego box or a community playground. Primary reds and blues interact with other muted color wheel muted hues and appear to change with the interactions of the gearings, spilling and rising in a vertical, fluid fashion allowing the eye to gently meander easily within the work.
Davide uses rotating glass sheets to shield the innards of the work—a machine-like construction of extreme precision, in which she includes pinions and gears repurposed from old clocks. The artist has masterfully and precisely created a mechanism, at once a functional, kinetic utility, and also a specimen, laminated and preserved within planes of glass to be examined and studied. Steel Embrace is, in fact, both.
Davide is suggesting with this gear art sculpture that the actions and reactions involved in aspects of human interaction cannot only be understood in linear or static terms. We are forever linked to our past, though neither defined by it nor confined to it. Past experience may in fact act as a life filter, coloring our present and future interactions and relationships, fueling prejudices and biases, while also fostering our ideals and desires. All of these internal forces are dynamic, remaining fluid throughout our lives, because our lives are not in a vacuum. Future experiences and revelations will, thankfully, change the course of our very perceptions.
The beauty of childhood is the absence of these filters. Exploration and learning is untainted, for the most part. Every day is full of new glorious and frightening information that is reflected upon the self and upon others, and an effort to create a bridge between the two is inevitable. Davide’s kinetic Steel Embrace captures this struggle in microcosm, revealing the beauty of the losses and loves of our pasts, presents and futures.
The Kinetic Sculpture Artist
at Work
