Deryk Houston's Art Gallery

My son Samuel has just completed a new sculpture for the city of Nanaimo. It is called “Borrowed Light”.
The design is entirely his and I think it worked out just great. We don;t have a large workshop but this piece came together without any hitches. If I learned anything from my trips to Iraq, it was to learn to make do with what you have and I try to pass on this idea to Samuel. (One never has a big enough budget or a big enough work space or all the special tools we would like but with carefull planning one can do amazing things).
The tall arching steel was shaped in Vancouver to Samuels specs. It amazes me how much power must be in the machines that can nicely shape and bend four inch hard steel into a consistant form. It worked beautifully. Each section was delivered to our front lawn by a large truck. We then carried the pieces around to our backyard. The largest piece had to be carried through our neighbours yard in order to make it around corners and then carefully lowered into our back work space. The steel weighs about ten pounds a foot and so it adds up quickly to a deadweight. The first task was to get the main standing post into position. Samuel welded the heavy base onto the four inch thick steel and then calculated the shapes that would act as braces in order to carry the tremendous forces driving through the arching main shape. These special braces were cut at a shop near our home. We don;t have special overhead cranes to lift anything and so we had to improvise in order to get the main post up using sheer brute force. Our first priority is safety and so we decided to cut a few feet off the main arch in order to make the structure more manageable. We then created special arching brackets that would allow us to attach that section back on. Everything is heavy duty. We would rather overengineer than take chances with strength in design.
The other sections were then hoisted up into position using a pulley and rope. There is tremendous power in pulleys as they cut down the load several times and allow you to lift a substantial weight with a small amount of effort. Samuel added extra brackets to the design in order to carry the loads. The weght is carried in a simple way using several built in redundancy measures. The result is a clean design that is very strong.
After assembly here in our backyard and workshop, we dismantled the sculpture and installed it in Nanaimo. Everything went like clockwork thanks to the city engeneering department and Samuels careful planning. I was very proud how he took charge and set to work with the installation. Congratulations Samuel on a job well done!