The Pawtucket Foundation
Wind Rotor - Donald Gerola
Situated across the Blackstone River, Wind Rotor is a prime example of the kinetic sculpture of artist Donald Gerola. Monumental in size, the sculpture is best viewed with the downtown Pawtucket skyline on the horizon, as it mirrors various rooftop weathervanes across the city moving in synch with the wind. At one point a node of cables in Gerola’s installation Weaving, a project that probed the history of Pawtucket and its relation to the natural landscape, the Wind Rotor provides a key parallel to Pawtucket’s industrial past: that of mechanical movement driven by nature, the same as the mills were powered by the coursing Blackstone River.
Gerola, who studied physics at the University of Dayton, Ohio, says he enjoys the structural challenges presented by including kinetic elements in his sculpture. The son of an engineer and a pianist, the artist has had a fascination with both beauty and mechanics for as long as he can remember. After his university studies, the aspiring Renaissance man became enamored with supergraphics, a method of expanding and altering the perception of a place using colorful geometric or typographic designs. Eventually, Gerola moved to altering space as it exists in three dimensions, and not just on the walls of building—sculpture provided a context for the artist to seamlessly bridge engineering and design.
Today, Gerola’s work ranges from small-scale to the truly monumental. Generally working in steel, he lauds the material for its dualism, encapsulated by its heavy weight and its ability to appear weightless, which his kinetic work exemplifies even further. But also inherent in the material is a sturdy connection to its primal and permanent source. “Steel comes from the earth,” Gerola explains. “It roots my sculptures to their origin, the natural world, and so I will often leave the base of my sculptures unpainted to keep that rootedness plainly visible.”
Gerola’s work has exhibited as part of the Art Expo in New York, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and throughout Rhode Island. Images have been printed in numerous publications, and his Delineated Static Sculpture was on loan to the Springfield Museum from April 2008 to May 2010. He maintains a fascinating studio in Lorraine Mills that is open to the public.
Image courtesy of Donald Gerola.
Wind Rotor - Donald Gerola
Situated across the Blackstone River, Wind Rotor is a prime example of the kinetic sculpture of artist Donald Gerola. Monumental in size, the sculpture is best viewed with the downtown Pawtucket skyline on the horizon, as it mirrors various rooftop weathervanes across the city moving in synch with the wind. At one point a node of cables in Gerola’s installation Weaving, a project that probed the history of Pawtucket and its relation to the natural landscape, the Wind Rotor provides a key parallel to Pawtucket’s industrial past: that of mechanical movement driven by nature, the same as the mills were powered by the coursing Blackstone River.
Gerola, who studied physics at the University of Dayton, Ohio, says he enjoys the structural challenges presented by including kinetic elements in his sculpture. The son of an engineer and a pianist, the artist has had a fascination with both beauty and mechanics for as long as he can remember. After his university studies, the aspiring Renaissance man became enamored with supergraphics, a method of expanding and altering the perception of a place using colorful geometric or typographic designs. Eventually, Gerola moved to altering space as it exists in three dimensions, and not just on the walls of building—sculpture provided a context for the artist to seamlessly bridge engineering and design.
Today, Gerola’s work ranges from small-scale to the truly monumental. Generally working in steel, he lauds the material for its dualism, encapsulated by its heavy weight and its ability to appear weightless, which his kinetic work exemplifies even further. But also inherent in the material is a sturdy connection to its primal and permanent source. “Steel comes from the earth,” Gerola explains. “It roots my sculptures to their origin, the natural world, and so I will often leave the base of my sculptures unpainted to keep that rootedness plainly visible.”
Gerola’s work has exhibited as part of the Art Expo in New York, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and throughout Rhode Island. Images have been printed in numerous publications, and his Delineated Static Sculpture was on loan to the Springfield Museum from April 2008 to May 2010. He maintains a fascinating studio in Lorraine Mills that is open to the public.
Image courtesy of Donald Gerola.