I built this floor-standing Rolling Ball Sculpture for a great, funny gentleman named Freddie. He requested a helical lift, which I hadn’t built in quite some time. I made the frame, added the lift and track splitters, and then started filling it with tracks and elements.

There are four tracks on this one. Loop d’ loops, of course, a tall skinny coil, ball-collecting tipping arm, spinner, flat spiral, horizontal zig-zag, “balls on track,” lots of dips and curves, and my favorite — the teeter-totter ball exchanger. All four tracks eventually merge into the flat collector plate at the bottom left. I covered the plate with a piece of leather to deaden the sound of the marbles rolling across it and keep the sculpture a little quieter.

When I finished the RBS, Freddie told me he was having trouble finding a table that looked right for displaying it. He asked if I could build one. I’d never made a stand specifically for one of my Rolling Ball Sculptures before, but naturally I said I could do it.

It ended up being the first stand I ever built for an RBS, and I really liked how it came out. I used the same size stainless steel rod for the stand that I used for the sculpture’s frame, so the two look like they were always meant to be together. Since then, I’ve built stands for other sculptures as well.

100% stainless steel, TIG welded.