 Hello, and welcome to Art in Our Front Yard. Today, we're talking about Art at the Jet Port, and several of the artists who've made an art court here will be talking about their work and their process. Today, we're going to hear from Jay Soyer, who is the artist who made one of the pieces at the Portland International Jet Port, a spirit of its own. This is a piece that draws very strongly from the history of aviation in the state of Maine, and it's also a lovely steel sculpture. Jay will talk to you about the history of it and what brought him to making pieces out of steel shear rings. We're here to talk about a square little sculpture. It's a sculpture installed at the Portland International Jet Port. It was installed in April of 2014. It was very organic, how it all came about. And my name is Jay Soyer. The material that the sculpture was created with, the shear rings, they have a history and a chain of custody that's pretty interesting. This here is a steel shear ring. This would have been from the mid-20th century. It is a band created with 3 16ths by 1 inch flat bar with a little tongue and groove alignment here on the end. And it's rolled into a 4 1 half inch outside diameter circle. And these would have been used by the thousands in these wooden trusses at the Brunswick Naval Air Station. So they were used in the construction of wooden trusses for hangar number two at the Brunswick Naval Air Station. And this would have been built in World War II. And they used a lot of wood to conserve on steel in that era. And these were kits that were made by, I believe it was Warehouse, a company on the West Coast, had government contracts and they put these hangars up all over the nation. So two of them were at Brunswick. And in the year 2000, hangar number two was demolished. And then a company in Portland, Maine, they were actually working on Thompson Point. It was called Bandstormers. And they salvaged a bunch of these wooden trusses to repurpose the wood. So as they were breaking down the trusses and all the different courses of lumber, they actually saved each of these individual rings and the bolts and washers and everything and used the wood. So then in the year 2004, a very good friend of mine named David McLaughlin noticed these shear rings at Thompson Point and he was doing some work with the owner. And he traded some of his services to acquire these shear rings. They were really maybe his most cherished possession for a raw material. In that time, I was actually in transition from my engineering and welding career and chasing this passion to be a sculptor and had met David and we became very close friends. So our friendship had grown and all. And then sadly enough in the year 2010, David took his own life. So that very morning he had penned a letter and he wanted me to have this remaining collection of shear rings to carry on the subject of spheres. And he had made spheres up to a certain diameter and I was making spheres of different materials. So I finally got that collection of shear rings to my studio and began making my very first sphere out of that and there was maybe 6,000 shear rings total. And so I wanted that first sphere to be significant somehow. And as it turned out, luck would have it that I had a collection of some of David's work and in it were these small spheres that he had made with the shear rings. So my very first one was 32 inches and I took one of his that was around 19 inches. And as I was creating mine, I set his inside it and then completed mine and titled the piece Late Collaboration in honor of him and his influence and all. And that's on display at my gallery at home in Warren and that inspired obviously to go bigger and this was something we had both talked of was a sphere inside a sphere but I had never done one and he had never done one. So this was a great achievement here in itself for me and it was a great way to pay tribute to David. So the next one, the bigger one was even more powerful and that was a 55 inch diameter on the outside with a 32 hanging in the center of it. And I attached an image of that sculpture in progress really because it had no base to my email campaign and it got some response from a patron and they wanted all the information about it. So I wrote quite a letter with the history and all about it and they really felt that the story had so much main history that it should stay in Maine and be prominently displayed for the people of Maine and its visitors to have exposure to. So they tipped me off to the 1916 Foundation and the 1916 Foundation felt that it was a worthy project. So I set out on a mission to find a body which would be the Davis Town Museum in Liberty. They celebrate the marriage of tools and art and they have a museum already and David was a past board member and I was a board member so it seemed pretty fitting to have the museum purchase the rights to exhibit the sculpture and then find a real prominent place in the state of Maine to display it. So I had heard of the recent sculptures installed at the Jet Port. So I contacted the Jet Port and it was also pertinent there I think very much and the reception of it was strong because of the aviation history that was already there and well represented by coming from the hangar. And also Paul Bradbury felt that the spherical shape represented the globe well which was strong in the aviation industry and actually used in a lot of logos and all. So we worked and worked for a couple of years time and went through the process and the foundation cut a check to the museum and the museum purchased the rights to exhibit it and see the Jet Port agreed to display it and then we went before the Portland Public Act Committee and they approved the sculpture and then we worked through the location. We changed the elevation of the sculpture to fit that location. So it's a little bit site specific for being right there on Jet Port Boulevard and real close to the runway you can see it if you're on the access road in a vehicle or you can see it if you're taxiing on the Time Mac. So it has generated some response from around the country. People asking a lot of questions all the time what are the rings and all. So this is really a great opportunity here that the Portland Public Act Committee has provided for me to tell this story and this story to be accessible for those who see the sculpture and wanna know that. Okay, so back to the sculpture, the spirit of its own. The outside diameter of the outside sphere is 55 inches and inside that on a stainless steel cable hangs a 32 inch diameter sphere. Bottom, it has been modified a little bit so that six of those particular shear rings line up with the legs that come up to support it. The legs were cut from steel flat bar. They were tapered like from four inches at the bottom to two inches at the top and then rolled to the form to get that little kind of force perspective going up and trying to blend in there and meet the bottom of the sphere and blend right in for a nice transition. So it's all steel, it'll weather naturally. The jet port has agreed to apply a penetral annually if needed. I don't suspect that we're gonna need that. I expect we're gonna lighten that up and it still is gaining its patina on the base. When that was made, that still had a mill scale on it. The top is well patinaed. The inside sphere already has a coat of oil on it but it looks like it's gonna weather very well. So it really should be real easy to maintain. It's gonna be there forever. It's an indefinite loan from the museum to the jet port and if it could potentially get moved to another location on the jet port but with just that annual or less than annual application of the oil, it will hold up fine to the outdoors here in Maine. It's gonna be there forever. So the oil will do it.