Magnetic Sculpture

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There's something sensual about these works that brings the audience in to look closely and take delight in these sculptural and sonic worlds. In one case, in 1975, people discovered a hematite-rich bar,” Fu said. “Its purpose was unknown, and it was broken, but it was clearly very carefully made.

MAGNETS ARE A CHOKING HAZARD AND WORSE! Magnets are one of the few items that when swallowed may need surgical removal. If you have a child who even stands the remote chance of putting a magnet in their mouth please save this activity until they are older. Alternatively complete adult supervision is required for this activity. To make it safer we used large industrial sized magnets rather than small neodymium magnets which are just too tiny and tempting for little ones to put in their mouth. Bronze statues were very important to ancient Greek civilization, but thousands of them had disappeared by the Middle Ages. They were most likely melted down for the value of bronze. What’s left is very few, and most of these Hellenistic statues are preserved in museums today. We probably would not have known much about them had it not been for Roman marble statue lookalikes. The ancient Romans often copied the works of the Greeks out of admiration. Their “fan art” helps us get a better understanding of what the lost bronze Greek sculptures would have looked like. Pull the stop knot tight, then grasp the clevis pin and pull the other end of the line until the stop knot is pulled up tight against the overhand knot. Now trim the line close to the stop knot and use a flame to melt the new end of the line into a small ball. The ball keeps the stop knot from pulling through, and the stop knot keeps the overhand knot on the clevis from pulling through.Bronze doesn’t rust, but because it’s made from copper it can oxidize. When exposed to the air, bronze will naturally oxidize into a greenish hue on the outside called a patina. These patinas are pretty and can look dignified with age but might weaken the bronze over time. Artists take advantage of this natural phenomenon and add their own manmade patinas to bronze sculptures. These colorful patinas help protect the work of art from natural oxidization. ferro fluid and magnetic paint experiment’ by roadnarrows the artist experimented with varied ratio of ferrofluids with magnetic wall paint, resulting in a ‘forest of spikes’ The people of Monte Alto lived in large communities and built pyramids and other structures—the largest reaching about 65 feet tall. Temples and compounds for the elite class dominated the city near the Pacific coast, while the community subsisted on crops from surrounding agriculture.

The finding gives strength to a theory that early Mesoamerican civilizations knew about the attractive properties of magnetism, and how to detect it with magnetic objects like lodestones suspended on a string — possibly even before magnetism is first known to have been described in China about 2,700 years ago. The people of Monte Alto carved large stone heads in addition to potbellied sculptures, many of which are strongly magnetized, suggesting the 2,000-year-old culture was aware of magnetism. If you were to tie it on a string or float it on a piece of wood, it actually could act as a compass needle,” he added. “If the makers of these sculptures had access to a tool like that, that’s one way they could have detected them.” Takis's studio, he began developing it in the 1960s or the early 1970s and it wasn't completed until much later. The ancient people of Monte Alto were perhaps seeking out these basalt boulders that had these magnetic properties,” Paris says, adding that they could have also been effectively using a type of primitive compass in their searches.

Strandbeest by Theo Jansen

If you have never seen a real bronze sculpture up close in person before, now is the time! There are several beautiful bronze treasures in Seaside Art Gallery’s International Miniature Art Show this year. Take a look at the show now to see them before they’re gone! This Miniature Art Show is viewable now through May 28, 2022. Before modern glass mirrors became commonplace, mirrors were actually made from bronze! That’s because bronze naturally reflects a shiny surface when it is cast and polished nice and smooth. For centuries, bronze mirrors were prized possessions of rich households living in Egypt, Greece, Rome, China and Japan.

What's more, many of the giant heads and bodies of the ancient sculptures were carved to make the magnetic anomalies align with either the sculptures' right cheeks or their belly buttons — suggesting that ancient sculptors knew how to detect magnetism, and that they had selected magnetic boulders to highlight these parts of the body. Probably the most successful idea is that they might represent some depiction of the ancestors of the ruling elites,” he continued. “The idea is: If you have some claim to power, sculptures of your ancestors with strong magnetic anomalies could appear very impressive to your subjects. The word people use in the literature is that there’s a performative aspect to these sculptures, so when the sculptures deflected a magnetized stone, it would appear as though there was something alive with it, or some supernatural aspect to it.”

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that repelled magnetized objects would have been seen as demonstrating the presence and authority of deceased ancestors in rapidly expanding societies ( After priming and painting our nuts Ican’t say I recommend this step. The paint just doesn’t adhere well to the metal. It did add a lovely splash of color which was enticing to my kids but be prepared for lots of chipped paint!

Central American cultures like the Monte Alto people also traded with what is now the Southwestern United States. The knowledge of magnetism, or even tools to detect magnetic anomalies, may have been transferred between these areas along with other goods. Objects like lodestones, which had exotic properties, would have been particularly valued in trade.

And though the study suggests that ancient Mesoamerican people had knowledge of magnetism and how to detect it, it leaves unanswered the question of why the figures were carved to highlight their magnetism. In preparation for an exhibition of Takis's work I had the opportunity to travel to Athens in 2017 with my co-curator, Guy Brett. The purpose of Mesoamerican potbelly statues have been the subject of debate among anthropologists for decades: Are they depictions of the ruling elite? A way to honor dead ancestors? Or perhaps portrayals of women giving birth? The short answer is we don’t have a good idea for the exact reason they did this,” Fu said. “There are some hypotheses which are quite intriguing … that involve digging into why we think people made these sculptures. You can gather your own parts for this project or use the kit (shown below) from Make magazine. You'll also need: