Tower of Babel, June 2024.  5.1 x 5.1 x 4.5 cm. ht..  Plastic letter beads, pigment, sand, resin.  (id#1658)

While working with letter beads, one always has to contend with the fact that certain letters are rarely used compared to d, n, s, t, and the vowels.  So, as someone who hates to let things go to waste, I've tried to come up with ideas that use the least useful.  Here I stared with Z and worked my way back up the alphabet as far as possible.  (My other main idea is to compose a racy love letter from Mr. Mxyzptlk to his dear wife Trxy back home in the Fifth Dimension.  She loves it when he changes dimension, and sometimes calls him Plstk Mn.  Still to do.)

Even I Would Throw Out That Umbrella, March 2024.  8.9 cm. diam. x 10.2 cm. ht..  Plastic letter beads, paper cocktail umbrella, resin. (id#1631)

A haiku of ten syllables, of my composition.  (I almost never dare to write poetry, a good thing.)  I have rarely owned an umbrella.  The last one I had was the Chinese type, a beautiful thing made of bamboo and shellacked rice paper, decorated by hand.  It lasted me at least twenty years and never broke.  I cut a weird figure in Manhattan with that (except in Chinatown), but who cares.  The haiku makes fun of myself, because if I had an umbrella, I would probably keep it until it was in a truly embarrassing state.  This tiny cocktail umbrella could be opened and closed like full-size bumbershoot.

Sacrificial Altar, Sept. 2024-Jan. 2025.  12.3 x 12.3 x 11.3 cm. ht..  Small stones, acrylic paint, pigment, sand, resin. (id#1692)

My original idea with this was simply to make a square slab of black stones embedded in black resin.  But I didn't like it, and so I developed this idea, an altarpiece.  I looked up the altars of the ancient hebrews and learned a few things.  The word "altar" comes from Hebrew/Aramaic for "place of slaughter" or "place of sacrifice".  The latter has a nicer ring to it.  The dimensions of the altars varied, but they were usually square, and almost always had a set of four horns at the corners, which are the most sacred part of the altar.  It is said that they allude to the horns of the animals sacrificed on the altar.  This piece took a long time to build, as I was only able to build the sides one layer at a time.  The last steps, after finally affixing the top, were to apply liquid resin colored blood-red that would flow down the sides of the altar.

Lotuses Sprouting from Muddy Swamp, Nov.-Dec. 2024.  7.2 cm. diam. base, 8.5 cm. ht..  Dried lotus sprouts, pigment, sand, resin. (id#1708)

According to Buddhism, the lotus is the symbol of the law of simultaneous cause and effect - one way of looking at karma - because it flowers and seeds at the same time.  It also grows typically from a muddy swamp, which would seem unfavorable to the growth of anything good.  This suggests symbolically that enlightenment can grow from the worst of circumstances.

Monument to the Mudville Nine, May 2024.  7.8 x 5.6 cm. base, 13.5 cm. ht..  Old baseball, nail, wood.  (id#1662)

A monument for losers.  The Mudville Nine are the baseball team which is the subject of a great popular poem, "Casey at the Bat".  Like other stories of tragic heroism, struggle, and defeat, such as the epic tree-felling contest of Paul Bunyan, or John Henry's epic battle laying rails (or Max Goolis's contest against the mechanical street-sweeper, immortalized by The Limeliters in their song), this poem tells of the sad loss of a baseball team.  (The poem, which I knew from my childhood, is really very good, with excellent pacing, and a surprise ending - one that passes you by before you know it, like the fastball you didn't even see.)

Ruach elohim - Lux est spiritus dei, Dec. 2023-Feb. 2024.  8.5 cm. diam. x 1.4cm. ht. base, overall height 13.0 cm., bulb 7.5 cm. diam..  Radiometer, plastic letter beads, resin. (id#1632)

These two phrases are, respectively, Hebrew for “the breath of our Lord”, and Latin for “Light is the spirit of God” - very similar ideas.  They are affixed to the base of a radiometer, which I probably acquired from the museum shop of the American Museum of Natural History.  The radiometer, also called a light mill, has rhomboid-shaped vanes inside, fixed to a central pivot that is suspended from a pin, is powered by sunlight, and works much as a windmill is powered by the wind.  The vanes are black on one side and white on the other.  The light exerts more force on the black surfaces than on the white, thus turning the vanes.  In full sunlight they turn almost faster than one can see.

To phos einai o anemos tou theou, March-May 2024.  14.0 cm. overall height, base 9.8 cm. diam. x 1.4 cm. ht., bulb 5.7 cm. diam..  Light bulb, plastic letter beads, resin.  (id#1633)

This phrase is Greek for "Light is the wind of God", essentially the same idea as in the piece with the radiometer.  As a photographer I have always been attuned to light's mystical aspects.  Physicists show that light has a dual aspect in being both a wave phenomenon and a particle phenomenon.  There is an enormous gamma of wavelengths of light, which give us the spectrum of visible light, and wavelengths that exist outside the (for humans) visible spectrum, and the photons which are actual particles of light. 

Dina and Dan, the Kundalini Twins, Emerging from the Primordial Soup, May 2024.  26.0 cm. ht., base 6.8 cm. diam. x 3.8 cm. ht..  Two metal spirals, resin. (id#1657)

I had a very tight spiral of brass, perhaps the spring for a window sash, about 20 cm. long.  I cut it more or less in half and stretched the two pieces out to several times their original length.  Finally I embedded them in a cylindrical base of resin.  As spirals, they recall the configurations of DNA, the double helix, formed when two single helixes of RNA combine.  This is the basis of sexual reproduction, as anyone knows who paid attention in high school biology.  Kundalini comes from Hindu mysticism, and is the snake that lies coiled at the base of our spines until it is awakened by meditation and climbs up the spine to the brain, causing ecstatic enlightenment.  The McGarrigle Sisters, Kate and Anna, did a great song about chemistry, "NaCl", about the romance and meeting of "handsome Sodium" with "Chlorine".  They had complementary valences in their outer electron rings - he was +1, she was -1 - so love was foreordained.  The last line is:  "Think of the love you eat - when you salt your meat."

Single Aluminum Spring, Oct.-Nov. 2024.  4.5-5.5 cm. diam. base x 22.0 ht..  Metal spiral, resin.  (id#1700)

Like Dina and Dan, but single.  Aways on the lookout for a compatible spiral.  Still, joking aside, I don't want to emphasize the chromosomal aspect of this or any of the other spiral works.  For me they suggest plants and growth, broader themes.  The base is a cylinder of resin in which the spiral has been embedded.

Swamp, Oct.-Nov. 2024.  2.5 cm. diam. base, 9.2 cm. ht..  Seven small metal spirals, resin. (id#1698)

These are much smaller than the other spiral pieces here, using seven of the tiny springs from inside retractable pens.  Likewise, they express growth.

Black Triple Spiral, Dec. 2024.  6.1 cm. diam. base, 15.5 cm. ht ca..  Three black metal spirals, resin.  (id#1722)

These metal spirals came, I think, from a spiral-bound notebook or calendar.  In most if not all of these spiral works, the base was begun with a layer or two of clear resin to provide a firm resting place for the spirals.  Once the base was hard - after another day - another layer was applied, and the spirals were positioned with temporary support from the outside - for example, a paper cup surrounding the spirals - so that they would lean outwardly as I wanted.  After several hours, the resin was hard enough for the support to be removed.

Transparent Spiral (Colonnus Flaccidus) - Hail to the Chief, Dec. 2024.  3.5 cm. diam. base x 13.0 x 8.0 cm. ht. (variable!).  Heavy nylon fishing line wound in a spiral, resin.  (id#1725)

This one wasn't quite what I had in mind, but in the end I decided it was a happy accident.  The other spirals, made of metal, are all perky, stiff, erect, and if you rap one on the tabletop or give the spirals a tap, they will vibrate nicely for several seconds, like a plucked string on a bass fiddle.  (I haven't tried to tickle them.)  But this was made of a length of heavy fishing line in nylon, which just doesn't have the lasting rigidity of metal.  It didn't take a nanosecond to see the comparison in sexual terms, thus the title Colonnus Flaccidus (which is not correct Latin for Flaccid Column, but it'll do - I'll bet you understood it).  I immediately thought of the newly-elected US President Hump, who is a stupid, mean, egotistical, corpulent bag of offal, which is about the most flattering way I can describe him.  (See further comments in the short text for this gallery, after the rest of the images.)

Blue Prelude I, June 2024.  8.8 x 11.5 x 1.0 cm..  Plastic letter beads, pigment, resin.  (id#1660)

My first version of the piece, in which I stupidly misquoted the lyrics, ruining the rhyme, "do" instead of "lose".  Well, it's still a half-rhyme.  The piece was done in layers to allow the rows of letters to be progressively more submerged in the resin, the last line embedded first, etc..  The way the letters appear, disappearing in the blue, is a bit like the sequence in the film The Titanic when Leo sinks beneath the waves.

Blue Prelude II (for Nina Simone), Sept.-Oct. 2024.  11.5 x 8.8 x 1.2 cm..  Plastic letter beads, pigment, resin.  (id#1683)

These are the words to the song written by George Shearing and Peggy Lee, Blue Prelude, but made famous (for me at least) by Nina Simone.  The correct words this time.  I first heard it sung by Christina Marrs with the Asylum Street Spankers, and then by Nina Simone.  Heartrending performances both.  I can't decide if the song is a sort of suicide note.  One never know, do one.

Semper in Excretia Sumus, June 2024.  11.7 x 8.9 x 0.9 cm.  Plastic letter beads, pigment, sand, resin.  (id#1659)

The full text is "Semper in excretia sumus; solim profundum variat.“  The Latin for "We’re always in the excrement; only the depth varies.”  For this sage observation I am indebted not to some Roman of 2000 years ago, but to Lord de Ramsey for his statement to the U.K.'s House of Lords of 21 Jan. 2009.  He obviously went to posh schools.  Combined on a base of simulated excrement, the second part beginning to sink in the cesspit.

Cat's Cradle, 2018.  15.2 x 11.7 x 3.8 cm. closed, 15.2 x 23.4 x 2.4 cm. open.  Cigar box, threaded dental floss.  (id#1720)

This was made to be photographed - just the main part with the threaded floss - and is one of the still life photographs found elsewhere on this website.  Most of those were dismantled after making the exposures.  A handful, like this one, remained assembled as for the corresponding photograph.  But I find this one equally satisfying as a small sculpture.

A Chicken Who Had Spine,  2021.  20.0 x 2.5 x 2.0 cm. ca..  Chicken vertebrae strung on jute cord.  (id#1686)

A hanging sculpture, composed simply of the vertebrae of a chicken.  Some may find such subject matter grotesque, but I have always been fascinated - despite being a teeny bit repelled - by bones and organs.  Their forms are marvelous, more than anything made by humans, from the dinosaur reconstructions in museums of natural history to the hearts and kidneys preserved in formaldehyde.  In older times, an adventurous few dared to dissect human cadavers, sometimes in the interest of medical science, sometimes in the interest of art (like Leonardo, although his interest was equally or more scientific).  I have a book of the bizarre constructions of Frederik Ruysch, the Dutch anatomist of around 1700.  He used fetal skeletons (from stillborn babies), and other organs or body products like gall stones and kidney stones, to make amazing tableaux.  He composed with the eye of an artist and the profound interest of a philosopher.

Bone Flute I, June 2021.  14.0 x 5.0 cm. diam..  Bovine bone with holes drilled.  (id#1553)

A length of beef bone, cut blunt at the ends, then perforated with numerous holes to make a primitive flute.  I found it in the woods near the Basiica di Superga in Torino, where it must have been for years, half-buried in the dirt.  (I drilled the holes - I didn't find the bone this way.)

Not about bones, but about flutes:  the myth of Syrinx is rich and fascinating.  She was a nymph, and she was pursued by Pan, who wanted her for the usual reason.  To escape him, she dove into the water and was transformed into hollow reeds, which made a sound with the wind.  Frustrated, Pan collected the reeds and made himself a set of pipes - thus the famous Pipes of Pan.  (The word syringe also derives from her name.)  What does Bacall say in that film?  "You know how to whistle, don't you?  You just put your lips together and blow!"

Bone Flute II, April 2024.  22.0. x 5.6 x 4.1 cm..  Bovine bone with holes drilled.  (id#1655)

A length of beef bone, broken roughly at the ends, then drilled with numerous holes to make a primitive flute.  Found in the woods near the Basiica di Superga in Torino, where it apparently had been for years, worked on by the forces of nature.  Perhaps left over from someone's barbecue.   (I drilled the holes.)