Kinetic Fun

Yesterday we touched on ways to add visual movement to your work; but visual is only way one to add the excitement of movement to artwork. Kinetic design involves creating work that actually moves due to the way it is used or where it is displayed.

Jewelry lends itself to kinetic design quite easily since it is displayed on a person and we do expect people to move about, providing the motion that engages that part of the design. If you are familiar with Alice Stroppel’s fun and whimsical work, you probably do not find it surprising that she has played with kinetic design. Here is a necklace the uses both visual movement (in the lines of the canes) as well as actual movement. Part of the whimsy here is in how the dangling beads will dance back and forth and the whole set can move on the main cord as the wearer moves about.

Dangles are a pretty common method of adding movement to jewelry. Allowing the whole focal set here to move quite freely along the neck cord will just add to the sense of liveliness and fun in this piece. Such additions to the design aren’t hard to implement as you can see by Alice’s basic engineering here. If you have a piece that you want to add a little liveliness or whimsy to, something as simple as dangling beads can do that quite easily for you.