Kinetic Sculpture Series
As an undergraduate sculpture major, I was awarded a public arts grant to create an installation in University City, Missouri. At the time, I was exploring how to immerse audiences in environments shaped by the shadows of moving figures. With digital projectors still largely inaccessible, I turned to low-cost materials and early animation and projection technologies, constructing my own machines using components like record player motors, lights, and lenses.
Initially focused on the projected shadows, my attention gradually shifted toward the machines themselves—their quirks, their mechanics—each resulting in an animation with a distinct visual signature. To unify the work and highlight these differences, I chose a single motif: the running man, inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering photographic studies of motion.
While working on the installation, I was reading Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and one line in particular echoed in my mind—a command to keep the protagonist endlessly running, used as a metaphor for exploitation and control. The image of an unseen force compelling a man to move in a futile, endless pursuit of nothing in particular resonated deeply with me. The installation became a meditation on visibility, labor, and futility, channeled through the repetition of a figure always in motion, never arriving.
My experiments eventually led me to the Zoetrope, a 19th-century optical toy. I began animating three-dimensional figures within it—something I hadn’t seen done before. Long before artists like Peter Hudson, John Edmark, or Disney Imagineers brought 3D Zoetropes to broader audiences, I was discovering the effect for myself through trial and error.
Tivoli Theater
The final installation took place across two venues. In the lobby of the Tivoli Theater, a restored early 20th-century cinema, I installed a four-foot-tall, hand-cranked Zoetrope. Inside it, two dozen miniature running men sprang into motion when passersby turned the crank—an interactive moment of analog animation. Nearby, a two-foot-tall phenakistoscope animated a flat, 2D version of the same figure, drawing a parallel between early motion picture technology and the human impulse to create illusion. The Zoetrope would later become part of the permanent collection of St. Louis’ City Museum, purchased by its founder, Bob Cassilly.
Pictured (counter-clockwise, from left): Hand-cranked zoetrope, zoetrope in Tivoli lobby, close-up of zoetrope, interior of zoetrope, close-up of zoetrope figures
Storefront Window Display
At Blueberry Hill, a local landmark known for its eclectic window displays, I installed a second set of works featuring my custom projectors. By day, a small turntable displayed a continually moving Zoetrope with the 3D running man inside. At dusk, the lights dimmed and the projectors came alive, casting flickering images of the running man onto small screens—creating ghostlike figures in motion.
Pictured (counter-clockwise, from left): Interior close-up of zoetrope figures, projecting phenakistoscope, 3D zoetrope, 8mm film loop, projecting zoetrope, storefront window installation at nightÂ
This project marked a turning point in my understanding of sculpture—not just as static form, but as time-based experience, mechanical choreography, and conceptual exploration. It deepened my appreciation for the lineage of moving images and the power of simple materials to evoke complex ideas. More than a technical experiment, the installation was an investigation into perception, repetition, and the tension between agency and automation. It also revealed how historical technologies can be reimagined to speak to contemporary themes. Though the work was rooted in the past, its questions—about visibility, labor, and the forces that drive us—remain vividly present.