Soda Fountain

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2010 – 7′ x 7 ‘x 4’ tall 400 recycled aluminum cans, string, pulleys, mechanical parts and two motors.

I designed and built the Soda Fountain with a kinetic art class at Stanford taught by Terry Berlier in the spring of 2010. At the exact same time I was invited to be the visiting artist for this class, Dan Goods invited me to show a sculpture at JPL, and so the focus of the class became to design, build, and install this piece for JPL. It was a blast! There were about 15 students who were full of ideas, enthusiasm, and technical skills. They dove right in to create this piece from conception to installation. A wood matrix containing 800 grommets and 400 custom bushings impart ever-changing movement to aluminum rods. On the bottom of each rod is a pulley and top of each rod is a can, beer or soda, but mostly green and blue, with some red and yellow toward the center.

This Kinetic Sculpture Class was funded by a grant from SiCa (The Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts) which was a collaboration between Professor David Beach from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Design and Assistant Professor Terry Berlier from the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University. The project was conceived to utilitize both the PRL (Product Realization Lab) and the Sculpture Lab facilities as well as to to bring engineers and artists together to work with visiting artist Reuben Margolin in the creation of a new kinetic sculpture.

Assistant Professor: Terry Berlier

Students: Sophia Alberts-Willis; Diogenes Brito; Elsa Carrasco; Rebecca del Monte; Andreas Peña Doll; Ethan Estess Alex Forman; Mark Frykman; Peter Kardassakis; Eric Kent; Mariel Lanas; Ian Macartney; Karen Shakespear; Elaine Zelby

Teaching Assistants: Jesse Karp; Jerome Reyes

Sculpture Lab Manager: Dan Tiffany

Product Realization Lab: Professor David Beach; Senior Lecturer Craig Milroy