Celeste Goes Dancing

Size: base 17cm x 17cm; height 40cm. Materials: electric heater base, reproduction blender, lampshade, chandelier parts, door lock, salvaged wood, Christmas lights. Date: 2015. Note: requires mains 240V power.

Celeste Goes Dancing was my earliest attempt at a kinetic (moving) sculpture. The name comes from a book of South American fantastic short stories that I owned when I was into the magical realism style, I remember nothing about the book apart that it was my introduction to the wonder of Jorge Luis Borges, so it deserves to be memorialised.

She is a depiction of a “flapper”, the party girls of the 1920’s, who were simultaneously lionised and demonised by the media of the time (oddly enough for the same reasons). The canonical flapper had a bobbed haircut and a shamefully short dress and was usually photographed as though in the midst of some energetic crazy dance. To learn more, read about the insane exploits of Zelda Fitzgerald or immerse youself in the wonderful madness of the “Bright Young Things” in Evelyn Waugh’s “Vile Bodies”, also a good movie. Anyway you get the picture, I have a mild appreciation of the 1920’s.

I don’t recall the genesis of the design, beyond picking up the door lock part that forms her mouth, and having inspiration strike. I made her hair from a piece of salvaged timber from the benches in a 1960’s chemistry laboratory; the wonderful patina is a result of stains from it lying in the rain on my steel welding bench. I’m not sure what her eyes were made of (perhaps parts out of an old printer?), but they look fantastic with the wild eyelashes, and a little bit asymmetric, perhaps she’s been at the “naughty salt” (see Vile Bodies!). I was going to give her earrings, but it never happened, so she must have gone out in a hurry. Her body and arms are from and old desk lamp and a chandelier respectively and give her a wonderful profile straight out of a classic 1920’s studio photograph.
I remember looking for a while for some little item for the feet, and I found a locking mechanism from a golfing umbrella had just the look I wanted, like tiny slippers. Her legs are hollow foam rubber intended for pipe insulation, very handy stuff.

Her podium is a reproduction retro food blender that I cut up and mounted a patterned plastic sheet from the light diffuser in an LCD computer monitor. Inside this is about 20 or so special LEDs intended for Christmas lights or similar, they randomly show different colours and rhythms. Quite suitable for a party!

The podium is mounted on a base for an oscillating heater, one of those that moved slowly from side to side. The mechanism for these is so simple I hope the inventor got their due. Basically the top can rotate on a bearing and has a portion of ring gear, about 1/8 of a circle, with endstops that prevent rotation beyond the end of the ring gear. It rotates on a base which has a motor with a cog that engages with the ring gear. It rotates until it hits the end stop, then the motor stalls and then reverses due to magic (as an electrical enigineer I do know exactly why, but the explanation is out of place in an art blog). It is similar to those in microwaves that rotate the turntable, which will start in either direction randomly. Unfortunately the motors run on mains power only, I would much prefer to use safe low voltages.

Celeste Goes Dancing is one of my special pieces, I really like having her around, I fire her up now and again for a spin (as it were). I have made her some sisters over the years, currently Astrid and Aurora. Here’s a group shot: