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Rambling Vanes, New Art Installation at Fayetteville's Lower Ramble

Verdant Studio
Verdant Studio
Verdant Studio's director of creative placemaking and artist lead, Dayton Castleman, created a new art installation for the City of Fayetteville at the Lower Ramble, an outdoor space in the Fay Jones Woods below the Fayetteville Public Library. This area gets a substantial amount of traffic from walkers and bike riders accessing this area for recreation or passing through on their way to the City of Fayetteville Bike Trail for transportation. "The Ramble is characterized as: a full embrace of the journey…not in a hurry to get from point A to point B, but rather, open to possibility…the concept falls nicely in sync with the cadence of a walk or a bike ride, spontaneous conversation, outdoor installations and gathering spaces," writes the city of Fayetteville, in reference to the recent re-naming of this area.
 
The installation, Rambling Vanes, is a kinetic sculptural installation suspended within the canopy overlook ellipse. Steel cables affixed to the bridge structure create a simple geometric lattice form supporting 14 minimal wind vanes that orient in unison to the current wind direction.
 
Castleman had specific project goals and challenges including: 
1) Design for a six-month outdoor, unmaintained lifespan
2) Kid proof and vandalism resistant design
3) Integrate into the site's landscape, architecture, and history
4) Meditative or whimsical design
5) $350 materials budget
 
"I immediately fell in love with the elliptical overlook. If you know my artwork at all you know I like to hang things. The overlook provided the possibility of making something that would be easy to see, but difficult to touch," said Dayton Castlemen. 
 

Rambling Vanes provides real-time visualization of the the winds, breezes, and gusts perpetually moving through Fayetteville’s Ramble park. Park visitors are given a 360-degree view of a cluster of small rectangular wind vanes suspended from a steel wire grid fixed within the railing structure of the projecting canopy overlook. One wind vane is located at each of the fourteen intersection points of the geometric grid.

The installation uses 100% stainless steel, silicone bronze, and weatherproof plastic materials andcomponents, and is suitable for months of safe installation without maintenance of the project components or materials.

Eight 1/16” stainless steel cables ranging from 18-feet to 25-feet span across the overlook’s open interior space, fastened using tamper-proof aluminum swaging sleeves and tensioned using marine grade stainless steel turnbuckles. All cable contact points with the bridge structure will be protected using silicone tubing to prevent marking due to friction or rubbing.

Each of the 14 wind vanes is fabricated using an 18” length of 1/4”-20 silicone bronze threaded rod, four silicone bronze nuts, a 2” x 9” horizontal white rectangular corogated plastic “flag” and an 8mm plastic sleeve bearing which rotate around the stationary rod as the wind changes direction.

Rambling Vanes is intended to capture the rambling movement of the wind in a fleeting index of moving shapes, adjusting their orientation constantly to the prevailing breeze. The gridded array of multiple wind vanes allows for a reliable visualization of the invisible atmospheric fluid they inhabit, whether responding in synchronized choreography to uniform currents, or improvising in the chaotic swirls of blustery turbulence.

The design of the suspension structure utilizes anchor points within the symettrical structure of the elliptical bridge to create a grid inspired by the converging and intersecting lines characteristic of many of E. Fay Jones’ architectural highlights. The grid of Rambling Vanes echoes the angular interlacing truss structure of Jones’ famous Throrncrown Chapel specifically, and introduces that crystalline geometry into the surrounding Fay Jones Woods environment which is primarily defined by natural, curving, and winding organic shapes and forms.

Simultaneously energetically dynamic and patiently meditative, Rambling Vanes is a practical weather instrument for observing wind direction in the Ramble, and a day-dreamy kinetic whimsy, intended to embody and inspire both a greater physical understanding of space, and the lighthearted joy of time’s fluctuating passage within it.

 

 

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