in praise of magnets

CMCA ArtLab Balancing sculptures 2014

How can you balance a series of cardboard shapes on the top of a chopstick? Not so easily. Unless you add four wondrous little circles of energy: Magnets.

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While all ArtLab for All Ages workshops invite some sense of play, this one added an element of science, which created a special air of methodical problem solving.

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So that people were not only composing with size and shape and color and form,

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but with angle and weight and position in space.

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After selecting a base (I had prepared 30: drilled a hole in a wood base, set in a chopstick with glue),

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each person began cutting shapes and playing with ways of balancing them on top of each other (little notches cut in the cardboard help) and on the stick.

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In some moments the room felt like a toy factory,

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in others it felt like a laboratory.

Bronstein_ThisPlayground_ArtLab_Balance_Sculpture 3Fittingly, in the end, the space was filled with hybrid objects

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sculptures that would stand, shift and sway with the wind,

Bronstein_inthisplayground_ArtLab_CMCAcollections of shapes that could be taken apart

inthisplayground.com_Bronstein_ArtLabto be rebuilt and recomposed, over and over again.

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Though one person was occupied for nearly 2 hours with just one shape, and that balancing sculpture was no less charming and compelling.

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