-- Adam Newbold (email)

Tong Birds

Yes, #1 and #2 are from the same tong, disassembled.
The original tong was awkward in proportion
but what beautiful lines in the separate elements.

-- ET

Old metal, junk, scrap

Here's David Smith on old metal objects:

"There is something rather noble about junk--selected junk--
junk which has in one era performed nobly in function for common man
has by function been formed by the smithy's hand alone
and without bearings roll or bell
has fulfilled its function, stayed behind,
is not yet relic or antique or precious
which has been seen by the eyes of all men and left for me--
to be found as the cracks in sidewalks
as the grain in wood
as the drops in grass
out of a snow hummock
as the dent in mud from
a bucket of poured storms
as the clouds float and
as beauties come
to be used, for an order
to be arranged
to be now perceived
by new ownership."

From David Smith by David Smith (1968), p. 152.

-- ET

Here is Tong Bird of Paradise #4. This new piece is about 10 feet tall.
We did a test installation a few of days ago. This will be in our Aldrich show,
although we hope to make another Tong Bird 18 feet tall.

-- Edward Tufte

Old tools, scrap, and their consequences

I like scrap metal--selected scrap metal--because it is different,
new, intriguing, available, inexpensive. It refreshes my vocabulary
for making artworks. It is nostalgic when scrap, but not so in artwork.

One initial element, the tong, then led to making and combining
the other 3 elements to construct my Tong Bird of Paradise.
These 3 additional elements are linear and ragged, in contrast
with the smooth 3D curves of the tong.

-- ET

Tong Bird of Paradise in Seeing Around

I thoroughly enjoyed the pictures, illustrations, and information about the Tong Bird of Paradise series included in Seeing Around. The photo on the bottom of page 29 is especially intriguing; Buddha appears to be looking on in serene approval, while the fish has an almost excited appearance—as if he's saying work on me next!

-- Adam Newbold (email)

It is difficult to convey how much time-spent-living-with-them goes into these. A year on average, with a lot of pieces and a lot of years overlapping at any one time. I saw a number of pieces in various stages of development while I was there. I think this is the first one to come to fruition that I also witnessed in an early embryonic stage. Wake up, there it is. Eat breakfast, talk with the guys, check in on Graphics Press, walk out to the shop, and there it is. Some time the next day . . . there it is. Three weeks later, maybe we should scale that one up. How's do these three look relative to each other, against the ground. Against the sky. Let's wait until it rains. Let's make a cardboard mockup. Let's visit the scrap dealer, MoMA, the flea market. There's this abstract forging of an idea that was not obviously separated from the testing of that idea's expression in the world.

-- Niels Olson (email)

Outdoor abstract sculptures reside with the land and its residents:
trees, grass, flowers, insects, birds, animals. In turn, artworks affect
the behavioral space (in the art jargon) of birds and animals that
move, play, pose, and interact in a field of artworks.

Walking down to the sculpture field, I saw a hawk perched on the
big Tong Bird of Paradise. The hawk patiently waited while I ran back
to the studio to get my camera and then posed for about 10 minutes
before flying off.

-- ET

We moved the big (20 feet, 6.1 meters tall) Tong Bird of Paradise to a small valley near our pond.

To check the verticality of big Tong Bird the crane's wire line is used as a plumb line (which is vertical and goes through the center of the Earth). Here are two images of this method in action:

A week later a hawk perched on the repositioned Tong Bird of Paradise. It is probably (p = .87) the same hawk we saw earlier. The light during the two different photographed visits differed greatly (sunset v. high noon), so we think it is the same hawk, different light.

-- Edward Tufte

Just a note re the hawks: the birds in the photos are two different types of hawks. The reddish breast on one looks like a red tailed hawk. The other one has a distinctly differently patterned belly and chest, most likely a red shouldered hawk. Unlikely that they are the same bird, a week apart. There's Visual Evidence.

-- A. Ziner (email)

Hawk difference

Yes, you're right.

-- ET

Still another hawk, the rare New England "Iron Hawk" (Buteo ferrous), visited the large Tong Bird of Paradise:





Buteo ferrous is a new piece, made from tool steel:

-- Edward Tufte

A Bird of Paradise by Pierre-Joseph Redouté:

-- Edward Tufte

Birds photographed

Bird of Paradise flowers in our studio. Photographs by Andrei Severny.

-- Edward Tufte

Tong Bird during winter storm

Big Tong Bird with a couple of the Millstone pieces:

-- Edward Tufte