Elevator Lamp

I like to take things apart. Sometimes I fix those things, other times I replace those things with new things. In either case I end up throwing very little away so that I can reuse pieces later on. Since I started making art however, my friends have begun supplementing my parts stores with things that they’ve discovered or are discarding. I often get texts and emails saying, “I found this, could you use it? Do you want it?” One such friend works for a fire alarm company that frequently redoes buildings with old elevators, and he has been kind enough to scrounge things from his job sites. One of his recent finds was an emergency call box from an Otis elevator along with some heavy gauge copper wiring, which I gladly loaded onto a shelf in my shop. With those in hand, I added: a chrome bracket from an ambulance, a couple of satellite dish support arms, and an empty gin bottle. The bottle rolls in the bracket, and the head pivots side to side so that the light can be thrown around a desk. The clean, bright colors make this lamp stand out from much of my other work while giving it a production quality feel that I find very satisfying.