The Art of Scott Weaver-One Man, 100,000 Toothpicks, 35 Years

Would you spend 3,000 hours to make a model? This man has and he’s done a great job. Thirty-four years ago Scott Weaver started sticking tiny sticks together. After creating some abstract structures, he started rolling Ping-Pong balls around them and that’s how he discovered his art. Soon after, the Golden Gate Bridge took shape, then Lombard Street, the Labour of Love and so on. The outcome is a nine-foot structure called ‘Rolling through the Bay’. This elaborate and most complicated structure consists of multiple tours that are represented by the paths that the moving balls create. They pass through neighborhoods, historical locations, and iconic symbols of San Francisco. There’s the Golden Gate tour, which passes through Chinatown and Aquatic Park ending at the old Fleishhacker Pool. There’s the Cable Car tour, which travels past the painted ladies of Alamo Square into Golden Gate Park and onto the old Ferris wheel at Ocean Beach. There’s even a nod to the East Bay that features a BART train and the Bay Bridge. He is not the only person to have made such ingenious models but no other has the same touch, the same unique kinetic components. The artist told the San Francisco Chronicle: ‘I always had a dream that I would build the world’s largest toothpick sculpture. It’s not, but none of them have a ping pong ball that rolls through it. It’s San Francisco as I see it.’

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