Erin Guido cranks up a flower

How do you choose the exhibits you go see? Last night I went to 3204 Studios only compelled by the whimsical name of the show there: Some Nice People Made Some Nice Things. That sounded . . . you know . . . nice.

The nice people were  Grace Frank, Erin Guido and John Paul Costello. If you are familiar with Erin Guido’s cheery work–which features simple, even child-like geometric shapes with happy text, and which can be found in a Hingetown mural and elsewhere–you know something of the vibe of this show: It’s happy. Bright colors and good cheer radiate from paper collage masks by Grace Frank, and from delightfully pointless kinetic sculptures by Erin Guido and John Paul Costello.

The highlight for me, and the reason for this post, is to show the kinetic sculptures in action. This is a new realm of work for Guido, collaborating with Costello to put her whimsy in 3D motion. What I love about them is that for handmade gears to function at all takes some skill, precision, and diligence. And in these cases, Costello applied that woodworking skill at length to achieve the most basic, simple things: A little breeze blows. A flower grows. Check out the video. These are just fun. And sometimes that is all you need.