Unusual sculptures always attract attention. Therefore, it is so interesting to try to unravel what the author wanted to say with his work. What idea did he want to convey to the audience?

In New Plymouth, such a place of attraction for visitors is the kinetic sculpture of the Wind Rod. It drifts in a gust of wind that blows along a coastal alley.

Wind Wand is a 45-meter-high sculpture made of a red fiberglass tube with a diameter of only 20 centimeters. Thanks to such a small thickness and strong, but flexible material, the Wind Wand can bend gracefully under the gusts of wind. It creates feeling that it is not just an incomprehensible piece of pipe, but a magic wand that obeys an invisible force.

Especially beautiful is the dance of the rod in the evening. At the very top of it, there is a ball with a huge number of LEDs that emit a pleasant soft light in the dark.

Indeed, when you look at this dance, which takes place against the background of the Tasman Sea, you get the feeling that some kind of magic is happening in front of you.

This monument appeared relatively recently, in 1999. Its author is the well-known New Zealand artist Len Lye. He began his first experiments in creating kinetic sculptures in 1966 when Lye presented the first rod at the International Sculpture Symposium in Toronto. Unfortunately, that Wind Wand didn't survive. Its counterpart, installed in 1999, also did not last long: that Wind Wand was so badly damaged during the storm that it had to be removed. A new one was created in 2001 for the centenary of the birth of Len Lye, the author of the idea.

As the artist himself said, the Wind Wand is a game with nature. It creates a balance that can at any moment be disturbed, changed, destroyed, and restored. Wind Wand shows how much our world and all of us depend on external circumstances, and that sometimes it is not necessary to resist them, but to accept them to become stronger.