"Jack" is a kinetic sculpture inspired by a hummingbird (4 ft x 3ft x 4 ft). He is made with hand cut and formed steel, salvaged coffee machine and bicycle parts, a motor, and a small light inside his head.
"Consider the hummingbird for a long moment. A hummingbird’s heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird’s heart is the size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird’s heart is a lot of the hummingbird. Joyas volardores, flying jewels, the first white explorers in the Americas called them, and the white men had never seen such creatures, for hummingbirds came into the world only in the Americas, nowhere else in the universe, more than three hundred species of them whirring and zooming and nectaring in hummer time zones nine times removed from ours, their hearts hammering faster than we could clearly hear if we pressed our elephantine ears to their infinitesimal chests." - excerpt from Joyas Volardores by Brian Doyle
Finding Inspiration
I had been contemplating trying something new for my next piece and had decided to create a hummingbird. Interestingly, during my design phase, a family member shared a link to a live feed of a hummingbird who had built her nest on a dangling network cable at the UofA. As I worked on this sculpture, I tuned in many times to check on the eggs/chicks - named Jack and Jill by the UofA. I happened to be watching the live stream when Jill left the nest. I fretted for Jack, who precariously clung to the nest for a few more days. When I learned that he had successfully left the nest too, I decided to name this piece in his honor.