Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times

Using old machine parts they found at Virginia Tech's Prices Fork Research Facility, Alison Skaggs and Wes Miller (not pictured) created a machine that makes abstract paintings by squirting paints out of soap dispensers onto lengths of cloth. The students and others in a Tech kinetic art class will have their machines on display at the Armory Art Gallery during Blacksburg's Winter Lights Festival.

BLACKSBURG -- Art machine: A kinetic apparatus that invents or creates a future work of art.

Students in an art class at Virginia Tech have spent the semester studying and making art machines that will be on display Friday at the Armory Art Gallery during Blacksburg's Winter Lights Festival.

Creations include "Knucksie," a paint-flinging catapult; "Contraption As Sex," a drawing machine; "The 1.5 Break Horse Power Dual Roller Nine Lobe Camshaft Push Rod Air Cooled Motorized Paint Dispensing Conveyer Belt System," a machine that makes paintings; and "Nieuw Zeil," a music-playing sail.

"The goal is to be creative and to create something that hasn't existed before," said Steve Bickley, a professor in the School of Visual Art at Virginia Tech. "It turned out super-successful, and we proved we could do it."

The class was inspired by the work of Theo Jansen, a Dutch kinetic sculptor and artist known for his movable sculptures. Called Strandbeests, they are wind-powered walking creations.

Jansen came to speak in November, giving students the chance to show off their creations.

"We weren't quite sure we could build machines," Bickley said. "There are no engineers in this class. But what they lacked in engineering knowledge they made up for in ingenuity."

Because of that lack of engineering knowledge, the first try didn't necessarily work, said senior Kristin Claeys, who created "Knucksie."

"I played softball for 14 years, so I wanted to make something that threw," Claeys said.

Her first idea using gears and rubber bands didn't work, so she started using a catapult made from a broom with a weight attached on a stand. It can send paint flying about 10 feet.

For Friday's show, Claeys won't be flinging paint. But "Knucksie" will be on display, along with a set of doors she decorated using it.

The "Paint Dispensing Conveyer Belt System" will be the first thing gallery-goers and passers-by encounter Friday. It will be set up outside because it's too large to fit through the doors of the gallery.

"Our first assignment was to make a drawing machine, and this is what came from that," said senior Wes Miller, co-creator of the painting machine.

Using old machine parts they found at Tech's Prices Fork Research Facility, Miller and project partner Alison Skaggs' machine makes abstract paintings by squirting paints out of soap dispensers onto lengths of cloth.

"There are endless possibilities about what we could do with it," Skaggs said.

Original ideas for their machine included watered down paint and brushes attached to springs, but the machine morphed into the giant, clunking hulk that will be on display.

"Contraption as Sex," the art machine by junior Celeste Lizer and senior Joe Czekner, also morphed from its original concept. What was envisioned as a walking machine became a machine with bicycle pedals that uses magic markers to draw.

"It's totally opposite from where we wanted, and it's bigger than we expected," Czekner said.

"Contraption" is also a performance piece, the star of a movie that shows it in action, made by Lizer and Czekner. The ideal way to view the machine in action is to peer through a hole into a dark room where it is making drawings, Lizer said.

This is the first time art machines have been displayed in the Armory Art Gallery, said Deb Sim, director of the gallery.

"People generally like to come and experience stuff, and this will be a leap for them," Sim said. "I think the more exposure people have to different things in art ... gives them a better understanding of what art is."

The idea behind the Armory Art Gallery is to give students exposure for their art, even when it's a work in progress.

"We wanted to make something mechanical, but what happened is much more interesting ... works of art," Bickley said.