Glass
leyden jar made from sand vacuumed out of gallery floor carpet, metal
table, sand, literature
40”H x 48”W x 25”D
For a show at the Wheeler Gallery in Providence, I rented a high-powered
vacuum cleaner and vacuumed the carpeted floor of the gallery. The gallery
and the stairs leading up to it yielded about 1½ cups worth of
sand and other debris. I melted this in a converted microwave furnace
to get a chunk of glass which I then took to a glassblowing studio and
formed into a jar that later became the leyden jar. At the gallery,
visitors were instructed to sit down at the desk displaying the leyden
jar, a sample of sand collected from beneath the carpet, a diagram of
a leyden jar, and instructions to experience the piece, then remove
their shoes and rub their sock-covered feet on the carpet to charge
the leyden jar with static electricity. When charged they could move
the attached copper wire to the metal ball on top of the jar and release
a spark of electricity.
Being
shown at a galley within a private school, the piece was set up to take
on the aesthetics of a school science fair project. This piece was born
materially and conceptually from the Wheeler Gallery and is hence a
site-specific piece and can never be shown anywhere else.