As a young boy in Oregon, Snelson enjoyed building models and replicas, though it was his love of painting that led him to enroll at Black Mountain College in 1948 to study with Josef Albers. Albers recognized and encouraged Snelson's affinity for sculpture before he came under the tutelage of Buckminster Fuller. Fuller inspired Snelson's renewed interest in the geometry of structures.
Snelson's earliest sculptures were experiments in the balance between tension and compression. He developed self-supporting structures where each of the objects in the composition were carefully constructed to rely on the assembly as a whole, and not an external prop to maintain integrity. The present works employ his typical use of cables, comprising of the body of the works and not the supporting tension. Snelson's sculptures have ranged from monumental towers to small "Atom Sculptures" (Snelson would explore atomic models throughout his career). The Bracelet in this lot doubles as a sculptural obect, illustrating the orbital path of electrons, and when collapsed a bangle bracelet.
