Jacob Tonski’s “Balance From Within” is a 170 year old sofa mysteriously balanced upon one leg.
It is not an optical illusion or parlor trick, it’s a kinetic sculpture. Kinetic? Yes, it moves. The sculpture is a powerful intersection of art and science that has garnered international acclaim, and for a short time it is at the Pearl Conard Gallery at Ohio State University Mansfield.
“Striking Balance” is a solo exhibition of Tonski’s work that explores issues of literal and metaphoric balance. Included are three sculptures and three short films. Prior to the opening reception Monday afternoon, Tonski spoke to students and community members during a free public lecture.
He spoke about his unconventional path to the arts (he began his career in computer programming), his past and current work, and his life.
Local artist Cameron Sharp attended the lecture and the opening reception, “This is one of the best artist talks I have attended. Jacob has a very personal relationship with his art and his audience which he qualified through his conversation about his personal investments and attachments in the concepts of his art making.”
The lecture included videos of Tonski’s process and he shared much of his experimentation, including his failures, with the audience. “He talked about the process as being long and arduous, and not necessarily yielding exactly the outcome initially intended, but openly following the process through nonetheless. This can be challenging and frustrating, but very important for the public to hear from ‘successful’ professionals,” said Sharp.
Tonski’s wit coupled with vulnerability made his teaching warm, accessible and entertaining for the audience.
“Balance From Within” is an antique sofa stuffed with high tech robotics including parts used in satellites. Tonski spent two years working on the piece which was in part inspired by his own experience of learning to ride a unicycle.
“This came on like a, kind of a whim. I was playing with a chair one day and kind of balancing it. My friend taught me how to unicycle years ago and it was like learning to walk all over again. I got on and thought this is totally impossible. Who unicycles? It’s an amazing experience to learn….The experience was so interesting in how impossible it felt.”
Tonski likened the experience of learning to ride a unicycle to what it must be like to go through rehab and learn to walk all over again. “It got me thinking a lot about balance in other ways,” he continued. Walking became an interesting example for him.
“We think of walking as propelling, but it’s not that at all. It’s actually dancing with gravity. And it’s so easy for our intuition to be sort of fundamentally wrong about these basic things we do that I’m interested in exploring, and possibly revealing, little truths like that, that I think are really helpful to our relationship to the world and how we live day to day, even if they’re a little absurd.”
And some might view a subtly teetering sofa balanced on one leg as absurd, but visitors to the gallery were awestruck upon seeing the work in person.
While on the outside the viewer sees an antique sofa, inside is a machine designed and engineered by the artist to create the effect of balance one might associate with a unicycle, but with one key difference. This machine maintains that balance on a fixed point rather than a utilizing moving vehicle.
“I’m taller than most people I know” is an interactive piece that also leveraged Tonski’s background in computer science. It consists of a platform with three independently moving sections that people can stand upon. Utilizing sensors above their heads and an integrated lift mechanism under their feet the sections of the platform move up and down until all three people are seeing eye to eye.
Tonski was exploring another notion we take for granted, the impact our varied natural heights have on our interactions with one another.
“This idea of creating an experience for somebody so that maybe if they have that experience it sets in just a little bit deeper, so they’re a little more prone to think about it again in the future. To me it was super optimistic. It was about creating awareness of things we forget to notice because they’re always there. That’s what we overlook all the time, the stuff that’s ever-present and bringing that back when it’s right in front of us,” said Tonski when discussing the piece.
Gallery visitors were intrigued by “I’m taller than most people I know” and were eager to try it out. Ohio State Mansfield students Peri McDougal, Audrey Galat, and Sir Lancelot Shaban didn’t know each other before stepping on to the platform.
“I thought it was interesting because we were all going through this experience of changing heights and we had something to talk about,” said Galat.
It’s impossible to separate the art from the science in Tonski’s work, and his own descriptions of it are evidence of the cross pollination of these concepts. During his lecture Tonski described his experiences learning glass blowing when he was an undergraduate student, long before he went back to graduate school to study art.
“What I learned from glass is that the way you work with it is you set up a set of circumstances such that the path of least resistance where the glass is gonna do what it wants to do anyway. You set up the path of least resistance so it ends up where you want it to be. ”
Tonski continued, “You can think the same way about experience in crafting artwork. What is the experience I’d like my viewer to have? How do I set up the circumstances that will get them to see things from the perspective I’d like to show?”
To experience Tonski’s work in person, you may visit the Pearl Conard Gallery at Ohio State Mansfield Mondays and Wednesdays 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Fridays 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. until March 7, 2014.
