Herington Metal Art…

Origin & Inspiration

This metal art is composed of parts from large industrial machinery, particularly semi-tractors’ transmissions and axles and bottling mechanisms. They were rusting in the scrap yards of Central Ohio awaiting the smelter where they might come back into society as paper clips, nails, beams, or other metal objects. I wanted to give these pieces a second life while still in their first life’s form because, for me, that is where they hold all their character. In their original form, these pieces may have helped carry a semi-truck a million or more miles, from state to state, country to country.

The challenge lies in seeing things that were designed to perform specific tasks and giving them a new context – using them as a working unit to perform something that couldn’t be further from their original design.  The Gadget Room is the perfect home for these pieces as it is a space where everything in it is in motion, and these pieces give the impression of motion because that is their intrinsic purpose. Everything in the furniture was designed to provide motion for the machine it came from.