Date Dial

Date Dial’s name clues the viewer in on its otherwise uncertain function, a variation of our system for marking time. Six rings or dials of stainless steel, etched with numbers, represent, from the top down, the months, days, and years. As the viewer turns the dials around the column, dates arrive and pass in the rectangular metal sights. A 700-pound calendar in a world where paper calendars are becoming obsolete. Does its physicality make the dates it conjures any more real? Its natural finishes appear both rusty and shiny, emerging as a man-made artifact from wherever it is placed. It serves as a time machine for the imagination, transporting the viewer backward or forward through time. Date Dial was installed in Salina, Kansas, as part of the Salina Sculpture Tour 2017.

Its making…

Its motion…