Weathervane

This abstract sculpture is inspired by the weathervanes of Brent Kington's childhood in Kansas as well as folk-art examples seen at the American Folk Art Museum in New York.

While traditional weathervanes only rotate, Kington's sculpture can move in three directions, possessing pitch, roll, and yaw to sway gently in the light breeze or if touched. Its asymmetrical horizontal element, terminated by discs at each end, delicately balances on a fulcrum—the rounded point of the vertical base. Nothing but gravity holds them together.

"Weathervane" is the result of ten years spent learning blacksmithing from the ground up. Trained in gold and silversmithing, Kington shifted focus in the mid-1960s after seeing the embellished, forged iron arms and armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

At the time, blacksmithing was nearly obsolete in the industrialized world, but Kington taught himself the art by consulting remaining blacksmiths, medieval texts on metallurgy, and modern scholarship on ancient techniques.

During the 1970s, he organized three historic workshops that became known as the birth of sculptural blacksmithing, inspiring artists to take it up and art professors to teach it in academic programs.