[figurine ticking] [CD player whirring] [upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] ♪ Mott the Hoople and the Game of Life ♪ ♪ Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah ♪ ♪ Andy Kaufman in the wrestling match ♪ ♪ Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah ♪ ♪ Monopoly, 21 checkers, and chess ♪ ♪ Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah ♪ ♪ Mister Fred Blassie in a breakfast mess ♪ ♪ Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah ♪ - I've always liked things that move.

Adding movement to figures that are normally static and still just adds a whole thing.

It just captures people's attentions.

It brings a certain life.

♪ Now Andy, did you hear about this one ♪ ♪ Tell me, are you locked in the past ♪ ♪ Hey Andy, are you goofing on Elvis ♪ ♪ "Hey, baby" ♪ ♪ Are we losing touch ♪ ♪ If you believed they put a man on the moon ♪ ♪ Man on the moon ♪ ♪ If you believed there's nothing up his sleeve ♪ ♪ Then nothing is cool ♪ - My name is Tom Haney.

I make automata, which is also known as figurative kinetic sculpture.

[gentle music] I used to make props and models and miniatures for TV commercials, for still photographers, for movies.

I always had a studio, I had a shop, and I had all the tools and all the paints and things like that, and I wanted to develop something that I could make a unique thing that would be all my own.

And I got into making a simple, almost like a marionette that's operated by keys.

[tinkling music] This is the first piece I ever made, and it's operated by the keys out front.

My wife and I were making whirligigs and I decided to make a piece, a figure that was gonna hang off the whirlig.

It didn't work out the way I wanted it to, so I said, "Oh," I put him stage and put keys out front and strings on him so he can be basically an interactive, a one-on-one sort of character.

The keys operate his arms and his legs and his hat and his whole body.

So it's sort of very interactive.

When I was making it, I didn't really know what I was making.

This turned into a little stage, this then turned into a backdrop, a marquee.

I wanted to put the keys that were out in front.

And so it turned out so well that I decided to make more ahead of time.

I was always a freelance person, so sort of working on pieces on my own.

And so I did that for, starting in the mid-90's, and I was in Atlanta.

I would work for a cartoon network on TBS and TNT.

And again, had time in between projects to work on my artwork.

'Cause I've always wanted to be an artist and I've wanted to transition between working for that commercial and an entity and just doing all my own work.

[tinkling music] I had a family friend who's a beekeeper, and he's like, "Oh, I'd love to see you do a beekeeper."

And at first I was like, "I don't know."

Sometimes I'm not crazy enthused about things.

But I got into it.

He told me a lot of specifics about certain, the tools and the processes that a beekeeper has.

I did some online research.

The carts that get put in and out.

And I was like, "Oh, it's gotta have a lot of bees involved" and "How am I gonna make the bees?"

And it turned into a really great piece and he loved it.

And there were many people from all over the world who were beekeepers just like, "I love that piece."

One of the funny things that I thought was pretty smart is I needed to make lots of little bees.

And what I ended up doing, instead of making them by hand, I took black rice and took little pieces of black rice and painted yellow stripes on 'em and those were my bees.

And so I could make tons and tons of those.

Each one of my pieces have a certain narrative.

There's some sort of story that I want to tell.

But I'm not so specific as like, "This is what this means."

I'm always leaving it open-ended that people can figure out what it means for them.

[saw whirring] In 2008, I started to get into galleries, and that was a whole different thing.

Right now I'm back, I did that for about 10 years, and now I'm back to being independent and I survive on my commission.

So I really enjoy the process of somebody contacting me and saying, "I want a piece about this or that," "I'm interested in rowing" or "I'm interested in dogs and horses" or whatever.

"My family, I want a piece about my family."

But a really interesting commission recently was a guy from New York, was an African-American guy, and he said, "I want something about the civil rights movement."

And originally he said, he mentioned Rosa Parks and that whole scene from the bus.

And originally I said, "There's not a whole lot of movement to it.

I don't know how dramatic or how interesting it would be."

And I asked him, what else could he think of?

And he gave me some ideas.

Then I went back to the Rosa Parks idea and I was like, "That could be really dramatic of her sitting as a scene from the bus, her sitting on the bus with holding her purse and the bus driver like pointing to the back, confronting her and pointing to the back of the bus and her just sitting there quietly and turning her head."

And I didn't realize how powerful that piece would come out.

But it was really powerful.

Everybody who's seen it really said, "Yeah, that's her, that's the story, that's the incident."

It was just like really a great piece.

And of course, I shipped it up to New York where the guy was and he was just like, "This is amazing."

He's been a fan, he's always liked my work, and he finally said, "I want to commission you to do this piece I have in mind."

And so it is a kind of a collaborative process where somebody says, "I'd like this."

And some things that people come up with, I can't do 'cause they're impossible mechanically.

Like, "I want this person to walk across the room and pick something up."

There's certain things I can't do mechanically, so we kind of figure it out.

This is kind of a personal story about when I saw a tornado in Ohio when I was 11 and 1/2.

I saw a tornado, came to Ohio, specifically Cincinnati.

This kind of completes the story.

This is the front, but this, I wanted to wrap the story around the piece.

And this kind of completes the story.

It talks about how I still have dreams and thoughts and ideas about tornadoes.

I have several pieces of art that are tornado related, but it's my own story.

And my wife thought that I shouldn't ever sell, so that's why it's here in my gallery.

I think about my pieces.

You have this concept in your mind it's gonna be a certain way or have a certain feel.

And part of the process is creating these, the story of the pieces and the lives.

Like when I'm sculpting, sometimes I'm trying to make somebody look like a certain way and sometimes I just figure it out on the top of my head when I'm sculpting.

They kind of take on their own personality and their own life because it's like I'm never a hundred percent sure how it's gonna turn out.

But I've tried to do things that are more realistic and subtle.

'Cause sometimes it just needs a head turn or an arm lift or somebody doing a little thing that's just like, "Oh, I've done something."

♪ So Andy, did you hear about this one ♪ ♪ Tell me, are you locked in the punch ♪ ♪ Hey Andy, are you goofing on Elvis ♪ ♪ "Hey, baby" ♪ ♪ Are we losing touch ♪ ♪ If you believed they put a man on the moon ♪ ♪ Man on the moon ♪ ♪ If you believed ♪