Narrator: Here the four lead plates are completely separated.
Artist, Richard Serra: This is called 1-1-1-1. And it is very, very much involved with the transference of weight.
And this piece is really kind of hair-trigger balanced because you have a pole. And as the plates ride forward, the pole, becomes lower. And just by the pole touching the vertical plate in front, that plate then holds up all of the plates behind.
We figured these pieces out with pieces of plywood, 4x4, and then we just converted the plywood to lead. We made them at Leo Castelli’s warehouse on 110th and Amsterdam Avenue, and I would go there with eight or 10 people, with no machinery and no tools at all, we would lift these pieces into place and set them and then hold our breath. It involved a great deal of patience and accuracy and strength to get these pieces into place. We had a lot of fun doing it.