In 1974, as a young boy, Carson became fascinated with the 100 mph chinooks of his Boulder, Colorado origins. He hand-built electronic test equipment to measure those devastating blasts of weather. Through his teens, Carson studied the experimental turbines of the Rockwell wind energy test site near his home, and built whirligigs inspired by those unusual functional windmills. All of his engineering and fabrication skills came from repairing broken bicycle frames at the bicycle store where he worked from junior high through college.

In 1994—eight years after graduating from the University of Washington with a BFA in photography, Carson revisited the whirligigs of his youth, combining the idea of an elegant weathervane with the whirlygigs he had always made.

When you look at Carson's wind sculptures, you see bits and pieces of his past and the influence of Jules Verne and Dr. Seuss.

Each design starts as a rough sketch on paper. Periodically Carson sifts through his sketches and executes the most intriguing. From there he works methodically: sizing the parts, figuring the mechanics, perfecting the rotations, developing the prototypes.

When the design is finished, Carson prints the final drawings at full scale. Then he engineers and makes the parts with a combination of industrial processes and hand working. That includes every piece, including the pillars, metal elements, glass cups, hubs and transitions. There are no “found” parts in Carson’s work.

Pippin Meikle Fine Art is pleased to present Andrew Carson, whose work is collected nationally.