In 1969 Fred Eversley was living in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, surrounded by artists from the loosely constructed Light and Space movement, which cultivated a futuristic mode of sculpture defined by its minimalism and geometric abstraction. He was relatively new to artmaking, but knew from his former career as an aerospace engineer that to make a true parabolic sculpture – an exactly symmetrical concave, something of a holy grail among his peers – would be achievable only through casting liquid resin while it rotates on a vertical axis.
Eversley, who has died aged 83, set about building the necessary kit in his studio, dismantling existing tools and machinery for parts, eventually creating a Frankenstein turntable – inspired by a 1940s-era technology that originally cast nuclear bomb components – on which a circular mould was affixed.
