Sculptures, and other lumpy stuff
Originally, "Mary, Mary" was entitled "Can You Hear Me Now?" and had an audio component. The impetus was to create the intergalactic equivalent of an NSA listening post, intercepting cell phone calls. Every 15 to 30 seconds, sounds would come out of one of the 'trumpets' of the piece. Possible audio events included a touch-tone dial sequence, whale song, a modem initialization, and spoken phrases in Welsh, Swahili, and Klingon, among others.
Unfortunately, it turned out that the visual aspect of my listening station was so arresting that the sonic component was unnecessary, and even distracting. In creating the 'box' to hold my sounds, I created something with its own intent and statement which worked somewhat at odds with my sonic message. So I stripped the electronics out of the piece, to leave it to stand on its own as just a sculpture.
To date, exactly one person has figured out that this work is not made from metal. It is, in fact, heat-formed PVC pipe, which is much much easier to bend into the complex curves required. I'm terribly pleased with how much tension there is between technology and biology in this work.
These are a set of seven paper sculptures created from a single sheet of paper. There's text within/behind the shell, and they're about 10 inches square. Click on them for more details.
Since the source material is about three inches high, I had to redraw the entire thing to make it smooth at this scale. Besides the obvious color image, there's also a single letter on each panel: "D" "R" "E" "A" "M". The letters are applied using a satin varnish, while the rest of the piece is a gloss varnish, so the lettering can only be seen under the right lighting conditions. As you can see from the photos, the precise position of the varnish-coat letters moves around from one print to the next.
The fact that the Chinese make lanterns out of paper is delightfully quixotic. In that vein, I've created what I call a "Luminarium." It sits on a table, with layers of Japanese paper standing straight up in waves. Nestled among the layers are tealights. The candles illuminate the paper both from in front and behind. I've made four or five of them so far, each one a bit different.
