Tag Team - Rolling Ball Sculpture #359 is a 24" high x 16" wide x 16" deep stainless steel desktop sculpture featuring two tracks and colorful 1" glass marbles.
Tag Team is available for $975 - including shipping within the United States. For international shipping, please include your city and postal code and I’ll provide a shipping quote.
This is a somewhat unusual design for me because it is semi-automatic. There is no motorized lift. Instead, the sculpture uses the motion of each marble to release the next one in line. You load the marbles into the long queue at the top, press the lever to release the first one, and from there the sculpture continues running on its own until the queue is empty.
The upper queue can hold more than 48 marbles. With that many loaded, Tag Team can run for well over 20 minutes with only one marble traveling through the sculpture at a time. As each marble reaches the bottom, it presses a mechanical lever that releases the next marble waiting at the top. When the run is finished, the marbles collect together at the bottom, ready to be picked up and loaded back into the queue for another run.
Track one sends the marble directly into a tall, narrow stainless steel funnel that works much like a gravity well. The marble circles around inside the funnel, gradually working its way lower as the diameter becomes smaller. As it gets closer to the bottom it picks up speed, and a marble can stay inside the funnel for 20 to 30 seconds before finally dropping through. From there it falls into a tipping arm, travels along a short section of track, and eventually reaches the lever that releases the next marble.
Track two takes the long way around, wrapping around the entire sculpture and changing direction several times along the way. It includes a long section of wavy track, smooth sweeping curves, changing elevations, and a tight hairpin U-turn. The two tracks eventually merge onto a short stainless steel plate before both arrive at the same release lever at the bottom.
Each marble essentially finishes its run by handing things off to the next one - which is where the name Tag Team comes from.
Like all of my Rolling Ball Sculptures, Tag Team is built from stainless steel and TIG welded by hand. It combines gravity, mechanical movement, and sequencing into a compact desktop sculpture that can run for an extended period without electricity or a motorized lift.
