Wandering Rocks is a 1967 steel sculpture by
Tony Smith, made in an edition of five plus one
artist's proof. The
Minimalist work comprises five different polyhedral elements painted black.
Description
The five elements of the sculpture have different size and shapes, based on
tetrahedrons and
octahedrons, with faceted surfaces painted with a
semi-gloss black, and are individually named "Crocus", "Dud", "Shaft", "Slide", and "Smohawk". They measure from 23 in (58 cm) to 45.5 in (116 cm) in height and weigh from 361 lb (164 kg) to 742 lb (337 kg). Several of the editions are exhibited in public, typically installed outdoors on a grassed area. The elements have no fixed positions, and their relative positions and orientations may vary according to the requirements of the specific location, so each installation is different.
The work was first created as a full-size plywood mock-up and then replicated in painted metal. The sculpture may allude to the structure of molecules and crystals, or the
Japanese rock garden of
Ryōan-ji in Kyoto. As Smith described it: "The Rocks were really conceived as one piece, although I didn't think of them as having a fixed spatial relationship to one another. They did, however, have a temporal sequence. I thought of each piece as having an identity but also as a constituting part of a group. In this group, positions were thought of as changing."[1]
Editions
The work was created in an edition of five, plus one
artist's proof: