Cindy Vincenz and her grandson, Fisher Nieman, 5, work to create compositions that will be turned into long, twirling kinetic strands and attached to a kapok tree. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Ron Hayes
Nicole Johnson and her four children were dropping by the Boynton Beach City Library that morning to see about getting some library cards when the kids glanced into the community room.
“What’s going on?” they wondered. And the library cards had to wait.
What was going on that Saturday morning, Nov. 8, was the second of three “Kinetic-Connections” workshops to create a sculpture for the 2015 International Kinetic Art Exhibit & Symposium, the city’s biennial celebration of art in motion.
On the room’s long tables lay a wonderfully varied array of motley clutter. Old house keys and floppy disks. Pebbles, bells and clothespins. Rusty springs and hose clamps. Buttons and beads, earrings and bracelets.
Armed with Scotch tape and rectangles of brown cardboard, old and young kinetic artists were picking through the varied objects, choosing a key ring here, a floppy disk there, and taping each item to the cardboard backing.
This is art?
“You don’t have to be creative to do this,” conceded Elayna Toby Singer of Palm Springs, a kinetic artist commissioned by the city to facilitate the project. “They’ve rummaged through their garages and junk drawers for hand-sized items to create a swirling strand.”
After each length of cardboard has been adorned with the artists’ chosen objects, volunteers will string the items together with fishing line to create 8-foot “swirling strands.”
If the artists looked up from their work to peer out the library windows that morning, they could have seen a bit of the majestic kapok tree that stands at the corner of Ocean Avenue and Seacrest Boulevard, branches thick with great green leaves.
When those leaves come down, the swirling strands go up.
Come February, a cherry-picker crane will adorn the tree’s bare branches with the swirling strands these men, women and children created back in November, and for three days, Feb. 6-8, the bracelets and earrings, house keys and floppy disks will twinkle and twirl in the breeze. And that’s what makes this “kinetic” art.
Kinetic means “moving.”
“We’d love to have thousands of strands,” said Debby Coles-Dobay, the city’s public art manager and the kinetic force behind the entire exhibit and symposium. “It’s a big tree. But this is all about being part of a community creation.”
The Kinetic-Connections kapok tree is only one part of the 2015 International Kinetic Art Exhibit & Symposium.
Throughout the year, 16 kinetic sculptures are being displayed along Seacrest Boulevard and Ocean Avenue, including pieces from Singapore, Switzerland and Poland.
At Central Charter School in Fort Lauderdale, teacher Rein Triefeldt and his students are creating a solar-powered kinetic sculpture.
While the strands swirl in the kapok tree overhead, the students will exhibit their project in a 60 by 30-foot tent on the ground below, along with 60 other kinetic sculptures — mobiles, table-top and lighted pieces and, of course, playful Rube Goldberg contraptions.
In the City Hall chambers, kinetic artists and scholars will speak on the history and aesthetics of kinetic art.
Of the $120,000 cost for the yearlong exhibit and symposium, about $75,000 is coming from grants and private sponsorships, Coles-Dobay said, and the remaining $30,000 in public money.
On that November morning, however, the men, women and children taping stuff to pieces of cardboard weren’t concerned with the funding. They were concerned with the fun.
“It’s pretty cool,” said Jamal Johnson, 12, busily taping floppy disks and key rings. “You can use your imagination and create something.”
His brother, Andre, 10, favored beads, buttons and a hose clamp.
“It’s fun because when you grow up you can be an artist and more ideas will pop up in your head.”
And their sister, Aubrey Brown, 8, was concise.
“I think this is romantic.”
Nearby, 78-year-old Addis Levi was partial to the pendants and earrings.
“I like pretty things, so I don’t do nuts and bolts and screws,” she said. “I like to try new things, and this is a worthwhile project for children and childlike adults. I’m going to do buttons now.”
When Levi had completed her bejeweled creations, she moved on to the “Selfie Station,” where Rachel Mondesir of the city’s arts advisory board was recording brief videos of each artist holding up the taped cardboard collection. The videos will be displayed beneath the kapok tree.
“Hi, my name is Addis and I love Boynton Beach,” Levi told the camera.
“Meet me at the tree.”
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