A few strips of sharply cut tin, a huge, hole-ridden hunk of metal.
It's public art.And Reno city ordinances require that 2 percent of construction costs for public buildings and projects be dedicated to a public art component.
That requirement launched a business for Reno artist David Boyer.
His kinetic art sculptures a 2003 public art project adorn 63 downtown Reno lampposts.
"The project was a big jumpstart," says Boyer, that changed his fledgling art career from a moonlighting occupation into a business." The business end is always difficult with art."
His theory about that: "Scattered, right- brained, chaotic thinking makes for good art; but not good business."
Boyer,who holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from California Polytechnic University, Pomona, is acutely aware of the shift between left and right brains.And, though he spent several years working the left brain as a materials estimator for General Dynamics Corp.
and as a movie prop designer, he's most comfortable and thrilled when working in the right hemisphere.
He's building his Reno-based business as an artist on a combination of the two hemispheres, applying them both to the very competitive business of public art.He was one of the three finalists for the downtown Reno lamppost project.
The project dovetailed in a lucky way with his decision to jump into art fulltime.
The kinetic art sculptures garnered $38,500, a price tag that paid for design, production and installation of the 63 kinetic pieces.
For the project, completed in early 2004, Boyer created five separate designs.
"You get to see all the different ones from any one place," he says.
That was planned.
In addition to the seed money to launch his business, the project also gained Boyer some notice in the Reno art and design world.
The marketing end of the business especially in the public art arena can be tremendously time-consuming, he says.
To get the business off the ground, he did the easy things signed up for artist registries with the city and local groups.He took some of the tougher marketing steps, too.
He boldly walked into the Gallery Cui-Ui one day and said,"Here, look at what I do." "We jumped on it," says Ann E.
Fullerton, co-owner with Pamela J.
Bobay, of the gallery.
"We realized how special his pieces are, very engineered but artistic." The gallery has a giant one on display,moving to the rhythm of an indoor fan.
The large, 13-foot pieces sell for $5,000 to $6,000."And we've sold a couple of them," says Fullerton.
"The real rat race for an art business," says Boyer is not the galleries, however.
It's in the shows those juried exhibitions that require application and non-refundable application fees."As a new artist, you have no idea which shows to go to," he adds.He gets the journals and the advertisements.He's tightly selective right now, studying shows in the Oregon, California, and Nevada markets.
That's the business end, he says, a plan driven by the fact that there's good money in public art, both the municipal government and the private development sort."It's also gratifying to have art in a public place," he adds.
The pieces require an investment but it's a soft one time.
Most of the materials that go into Boyers' kinetic sculptures are free, found during meanders through the parks and backwoods of Nevada.
And much of that material has come from billboards scavenged from the Steamboat Springs area.
The outdoor signs used to be made of metal, painted and repainted.
Perfect raw material for metal sculptures.
Boyer is refabricating them into cups, curves, and hanging tops, all bent, attached to wires, welded and riveted onto poles or installed onto the sides of buildings.
So,materials are virtually free, investment is time, and marketing is moving along.
Where does a kinetic sculptor go from here? Up next is a focus on bigger kinetic wind sculptures, says Boyer.
Like the one on his driveway that stands one-story tall and spins soundlessly in the wind.
