Mantra:  Bravery - Kindness - Clarity - Honesty - Compassion - Generosity,  Feb-March 2024.  16.5 x 8.4 x 0.7 cm.  Letter beads, newspaper clipping, and resin.  (id#1620) 

This mantra comes from the song “Forgetting”, part of Philip Glass’s marvelous opera Songs from Liquid Days, sung by Linda Ronstadt and The Roches.  The subject is a man who can’t go to sleep, his mind troubled by memories of his life.  Under the base of clear resin is a newspaper clipping of a Japanese Buddhist prayer scroll.

Living a Lie Will Lay You Low, the Truth Will Make You High, November 2024.  9.5 x 15.0 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, newspaper clipping, and resin.  (id#1699)

The words are borrowed from the song "Dear Old Battlefield" (1971) by The Incredible String Band.  The base is a newspaper reproduction of John Ashbery's 1972 collage "Acrobats".  Ashbery used a mere post card for his collage, 3 1/2" x 5".

Lo posible es para los tontos, March 2024.  9.5 x 15.4 x 1.3 cm.  Letter beads, clipping from Harter's Picture Archive, and resin.  (id#1625)

The words come from the short story by the Polish-Ukrainian-Soviet writer Sigizmund Khrzizhanovsky, "The Unbitten Elbow", from the collection Autobiography of a Corpse.  They are the Spanish (in both the original story, written in Russian, and the English translation) for "The possible is for fools".  The story is s about a man who arouses the attention of a newspaper with his answer to a question about hs daly activity, which is to try to bite his elbow.  To the reporter who comes to interview him, and who poses the question about the feat's very possibility, he answers in this way.  (The Russians have a saying, "Blizok lokot, da ne ukusish", or "Your elbow is near, but you can't bite it.")  The picture is an engraving from the late 1800s of a man in a  flying apparatus.  People wave to him from the ground.

Surely a man will love his wife with salt, or not at all, March 2024.  14.7 x 10.0 x 1.3 cm.  Letter beads, postcard, and resin.  (id#1621)

I have taken the words from Sonnet One, by Mariquita Platov.  A friend of mine (who knew Quita, as her friends called her) gave me a copy of Platov's 17 Sonnets, a book that is practically hand-made - printed with hand-set cold type on folded rag paper, like books of older times that required a paper knife to separate each pair of pages.  The sonnets' language flows like Shakespeare, so melodious and rich that one must read two or three times before beginning to grasp the sense.  (Who has ever attended a performance of a play by Shakespeare and not thought, after a particularly fine speech, “That was beautiful!!  But what was it all about?”)  The background is a detail from Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding of 1434, the convex mirror.

Open the Kingdom, Aug.-Oct. 2024.  9.9 x 14.1 x 1.4 cm.  Letter beads, postcard, and resin.  (id#1679)

The words are from the song of that name from Philip Glass’s opera Songs from Liquid Days (1986); lyrics by David Byrne, sung magnificently by Douglas Perry.  The background landscape, with a great palace in the upper left, birds, fierce winds, and a man with hands raised in supplication, seems to me either Persian or Indian, but I haven't been able to confirm which.  Animals fly in the whirlwinds (including a giraffe); the hills seem to move like waves on the sea.

Alles Kacke deine Emma, alles Scheisse deinen Franz, March 2024.  9.3 x 14.3 x 1.2 cm.  Letter beads, postcard, and resin.  (id#1622)

German for "Everything is crap, your Emma, everything is shit, your Franz."  My first wife, a German, told me this, the text of a humorous postcard back home to friends from a couple vacationing in a dismal place.  The background image is an actual postcard from a squalid, cheesy motel with swimming pool and TV, the Deer Dale, which sounds like a motel name invented by Vladimir Nabokov, where Professor Humbert Humbert and Lolita Haze might have stayed.

I peccati della mona, Dio li perdona, March 2024.  10.3 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm.  Letter beads, type C photographic print, and resin.  (id#1623)

An old (very old) saying from the Veneto, the region around Venice.  It means essentially "the sins of the flesh, God forgives".  I heard it in Giuliano Montaldo's film "Giordano Bruno", about the learned  monk of around 1600 whose theology ran afoul of the Vatican (and who thus wound up getting burned at the stake).  In the film, he and a friend are wandering around the red light district of Venice one evening, checking out the ladies - not shopping - just looking, browsing, like ordinary tourists - and Bruno has this little couplet to say.  Another follows:  "I peccati dei pantaloni, pronta assoluzione", or:  "The sins of the trousers, quick absolution".  The background is a photo of mine, a close-up of the smooth pink interior of a conch...."Mona" is an interesting word - think “mons veneris”, the mound of Venus.  It has nothing to do with the so-called “Mona Lisa”, in which “Mona” (or “Monna”) is a title meaning something like “Lady”.  In Italy, da Vinci’s famous painting is called “La Gioconda”, or “The Playful One”.

Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, Aug.-Sept. 2024.  13,0 x 10,7 x 1,5 cm.  Letter beads, postcard, and resin.  (id#1671)

Or, "I found myself in a dark forest".  The words are the first line of Dante's La Divina Commedia, his trilogy, composed between 1308 and 1321.  (While usually translated into English as The Divine Comedy, this is misleading to anglophone ears, as there is very little comic in it.  In Italian "commedia" has more the sense of a play, as one sees in a theatre.)  The background is Van Gogh's painting "A Path in the Woods" of 1887.

I’ll get up and fly away, Oct. 2024.  11,3 x 9.1 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, gelatin-silver photogram, and resin. (id#1694)

The title comes from "Wharf Rat", a song by the Grateful Dead, about a blind wino who - we are pretty sure - will never get up and fly away from his miserable existence.  But he somehow still has faith that he will.  The background is a photogram of mine, made by laying a tissue-paper butterfly on a piece of photographic paper, then exposing it and developing it.

What did I do with my bra?, March-April 2024.  9.8 x 9.1 x 1.3 cm.  Letter beads, clipping from Harter's Picture Archive, and resin.  (id#1629)

In this I quote my first wife, who in a very spirited mood liked to play the loose woman.  It's combined with an image of a 19th-century engraving - of about 1890 I'd guess - of a very tightly-put-together gentleman.  He resembles the chemist in Stephen Berkman's collodion photograph, busy at a table full of beakers and retorts, entitled (hilariously) "Chemist Discovering Non-Humorous Laughing Gas".

We Await Silent Tristero’s Empire, March-April 2024.  8.6 x 9.9 x 1.3 cm.  Letter beads, air mail stamps, and resin. (id#1630)

The quotation is from Thomas Pynchon's great novel The Crying of Lot 49,  and is the basis of the acronym W.A.S.T.E., stenciled on clandestine rubbish containers that really served as post boxes for an underground conspiracy.  The letter beads take the form of a snake about to strike.  The background is a number of air mail stickers.  They are affixed upside down to allude to some of the stamps issued by W.A.S.T.E. with inconspicuous but menacing connotations, such as an air mail plane flying upside down.  Such anomalous stamps are very rare, and are therefore the objects of fiercely competitive auction bidding by philatelists - one of these could be the titular Lot 49.

L’Ordine è la Virtù dei Mediocri, Aug.-Sept. 2024.  11.0 x 12.2 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, newspaper clipping, and resin.  (id#1680)

In Engliah, order is the virtue of the mediocre.  A line spoken by Marcello Mastroianni in Elio Petri's wonderful film "Una Giornata Speciale" (or "A Special Day").  Mastroianni plays a nonconformist (and homosexual) in Mussolini’s fascist Italy who has just been fired from his job as a radio announcer because he is not a fascist sympathizer.  The bullet-headed fascists emphasize order, but our Marcello has a much more intelligent point of view.  The background photo is a still from Jacques Tati's 1967 film "Playtime".  Tati is known for his very funny takes on the absurdities of modern life.  His humor is very visual, like that of Buster Keaton.  There is sound, which plays its part in the humor, but very little dialogue.  His protagonist, M. Hulot, seen here from the back, rarely speaks, and is always played by Tati.  I haven't seen Playtime, but I can imagine how Tati/Hulot would treat this mind-numbing modern office.

To the most patient farmer, the best harvest goes, March 2024.  10.7 x 13.3 x 1.2 cm.  Letter beads, postcard, and resin.  (id#1624)

The line is from Buffy Sainte-Marie’s beautiful song “Sometimes When I Get to Thinking” (1966).  It sometimes gives me goosebumps.  Combined with a postcard of Millet’s painting “Angélus” (1857-59), showing a farming couple at their evening prayer.

Is this bread good, or is it just my hunger?, Oct. 2024.  9.3 x 18.2 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, postcard reproduction of a a stereograph, and resin.   (id#1688)

The question is taken from Katherine Ann Porter's novel Ship of Fools, a masterpiece.  One of her characters thinks this, which is a saying that comes from Spanish (the ship has departed from Mexico for Europe).  It is taken to mean, when it comes to love, whether one is truly in love, or if it is only desire that deceives one into believing that it is love.  The background is a postcard of a stereograph entitled "The Dream".  (Personally I have wondered whether this means that the woman is dreaming, or that instead she is my dream.)  If you stare at the image (or any stereograph) and let one of your eyes wander out to the side (not cross your eyes), you will at some point see three images instead of two.  If you manage to align the central image perfectly, you will see the image in three dimensions.   

Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.  Oct. 2024.  15.2 x 10.5 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, type C photographic print, and resin.  (id#1690)

I'm quoting Matthew 4:19, wherein Jesus encountered the fishermen Simon (Peter) and his brother Andrew, and urged them to join him.  The background photo is one of mine, taken in 1995 in Camogli, Italy, a fishing town.  In one of the narrow streets near the sea there were two enormous frying pans leaning against a wall, supposedly used every year for a festival to fry great numbers of fish (but really to wow the tourists).  This one, at least two meters in diameter, was decorated with this fish fishing with a pole.  I don't see it online - I see one mush bigger, not as charmingly hand-painted as this one.

A Teddy Bear Can’t Hug Back, Nov. 2024.  9.7 x 12.2 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, newspaper clipping of a woodcut by Felix Vallotton, and resin.  (id#1702)

The words are mine.  The background picture is Felix Vallotton's woodcut print of two lovers (perhaps husband and wife), called "Cinq heures" (Five o'Clock), from his series "Intimités", of about 1890.  This work is dedicated to a special friend.

Alea iacta est (Il Gioco dell’Oca), Sept.-Oct. 2024.  12.4 x 9.3 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, chicken vertebra, newspaper clipping of an antique Italian board game, and resin.  (id#1687)

"Alea iacta est" - or, "The die is cast" - is what Julius Caesar is supposed to have said before crossing the Rubicon to advance toward Rome.   The background is a very old Italian board game, Il Gioco dell’Oca, or the Game of the Goose (from around 1700), with commands similar to those in modern board games - lose a turn, go again, etc.  In very old Greco-Roman times, such games were generally played with the knuckle bones of sheep or goats, which could only land on four sides.  (Having none, I used the vertebra of a chicken.)  Six-sided dice evolved from that.

XJPXSDZGTSSHZYSX, or Xi Jin Ping Thought, Oct.-Nov. 2024.  9.2 x 12. x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, newspaper clipping, and resin.  (id#1696) 

The abbreviated form of “Xi Jin Ping Xin Shi Dai Zhong Guo Te Se She Hui Zhu Yi Si Xiang”, or “Xi Jin Ping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”.  This is the recently adopted encyclical of the Chinese Communist Party, whose title, it is said, even some party functionaries have trouble remembering correctly, or to finish saying without having to take a breath.  So they usually abbreviate it to just “Xi Jin Ping Thought”.  I love the dream-like quality of the photograph, with Xi and his lovely wife strolling in a great field of flowers.  I'm tempted to say "opium dream".  The image flirts with kitsch, to say the least, but it makes me smile.  It reminds me a bit of the lush colors of Dorothy's vision of Oz in "The Wizard of Oz".  (It may be trivial to say, but I can't help feeling that Xi looks like a bank manager more than the leader of a vast country.  I don't approve of his repressive policies - it's as if he were afraid of what the Chinese people might do with more freedom.  But I wish our current US president had half Xi's good sense, as far as it goes.)

Wobbly, I Am, Oct. 2024.  10.4 x 9.3 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, type C photographic print, and resin.  (id#1689)

Here the quotation is from a letter from the poet Seamus Heaney, who was referring to his advancing age (not to drunkenness).  The background is a photo I took in a town on the west coast of Ireland, very near the docks and piers.  The classic rhomboid hazard sign, but showing the risk of driving your car into the drink.  I don't know if this road sign is unique to Ireland, where the danger is perhaps greater than elsewhere, but it certainly communicates the message.

Feed Your Head, Nov. 2024.  10.8 x 9.0 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, newspaper clipping of a woodcut by Felix Vallotton, and resin.  (id#1701)

The title and text come from the Jefferson AIrplane's famous song, "Go Ask Alice".  Grace Slick sings (incomparably), "Go ask Alice, what the Dormouse said, feed your head, feed your head!"  (In fact, the Dormouse never said this in Lewis Carroll's book.)  Most people assume (not without reason) that this advises us to take drugs (especially LSD).  But Slick emphasizes that it means as well to read, to learn, to cultivate ourselves.  To be able to go mentally and spiritually beyond the ability to say “Far out, man!” and such.  Who but a literate person - not so common in the world of rock music - would fill a song with musings inspired by or borrowed from James Joyce’s monument Ulysses, or write a song entirely in German?  Did the record company have misgivings?  (The hilariously ironic “Nicht sprechen mit einem Deutschen wenn Sie müden sind”, that is, “Never argue with a German if you’re tired.”)  Thank you for being smart, Grace.  The background is Felix Vallotton's woodcut, of about 1890, of a man taking a book from the shelf. 

May the sun fill the sails of your soul, March 2024.  7.9 x 10.4 x 1.3 cm.  Letter beads, reproduction of  Van Gogh's drawing of sailboats clipped from a book, and resin.  (id1626)

The words here are my own.  The background is Vincent van Gogh's pen-and-ink drawing Boats on the Sea, of 1888, which he made while living in Arles.  In my earliest years as an artist, when I for some years I painted, I imitated his style and tried to impart a similar energy.  With my sense of Vincent's deep spirituality, I think he must have shared this sentiment.

Aoxomoxoa, Aug.-Sept. 2024.  8.9 x 5.5 x 1.3 cm.  Letter beads, business card, and resin.   (id1682)

Aoxomoxoa is the palindromic title of the Grateful Dead album, with no meaning.  “It just sounded cool”, said one of the members of the band.  (It’s the little horseshoe shape in baby blue.)  The illustration of a scarab is the work of Rick Griffin, for my money the greatest of the lysergically-inspired artists of that era.  I think he was a big influence on the French illustrator Nicole Claveloux, author of The Green Hand.  The card itself was the business card of The Psychedelic Solution, the art gallery in the West Village where that sold a few prints of mine.

Yin cha yang cuo, Aug.-Sept. 2024.  7.6 x 10.2 x 1.3 cm.  Letter beads, old sonogram, and resin.  (id1681)

This phrase is Chinese for "an imbalance of yin and yang", or, put another way, a glitch in the order of the universe.  It's what was said by Chen Guangcheng, noted Chinese dissident, often called “the barefoot lawyer” (also completely blind), who opposed the Chinese government’s stringent and oppressive one-child policy with its forced abortions and sterilizations, when he was asked to explain how he was able to escape from house arrest and make his way over 500 kilometers to Beijing and the US Embassy, then to the U.S..  (Once in the US, he eventually came a Trump supporter, and - as a Catholic - was opposed to any abortion, whether chosen or forced.  I found it strange, and very disappointing in a person of such courage and tenacity, that he was only opposed to abortion, but not to coercion.)  The background is a sonogram representing an attempt at an in vitro fertilization which failed.

Ego nunquam in Arcadia, March 2024.  15.4. x 19.1 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, reproduction of a painting by Titian or Giorgione clipped from a book, and resin.  (id1627)

The title is Latin for "I was never in Arcady", that being the golden paradise of mythology.  It's my takeoff on the more obvious (but mistaken) reading of the original phrase, "Et in arcadia ego", or "I too was in Arcady", which was the theme of numerous paintings of Renaissance, when there was a nostalgia for a golden age that never existed.  In fact, those paintings, as idyllic as they were at first glance, typically showed a skull, to signify that Death, too, was in Arcady.  My rewrite, which ignorantly ignores the more subtle and correct reading of the original phrase, is simply that our reality is more Hobbesian:  nasty, brutish, and short.  The painting is "Le Concert Champêtre" of about 1510 by Titian or Giorgione.  My internal clown has one musician saying to the other, "Damn, it's hot today!  Don't you think we can strip down?  I don't think the ladies will mind."  And the other:  "Sure, why not?  I can play just as well nude.  Maybe better."

Thirty years since I’ve seen you and I still see you getting on the boat, Nov. 2024.  17.0 x 17.0 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, gelatin-silver photographic print, and resin.  (id#1703)

The quotation I owe to Eliot Weinberger.  I find it terribly moving - if you're in the right state of mind it can tear you apart, whether you were on the boat, or seeing someone off.   It comes from his The Life of Tu Fu, the Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty.  Weinberger has been mainly a literary essayist, but recently has published 58 poems in Tu Fu's style.  It can perhaps be seen as a biography, not chronological. but in the form of poems.  The photograph is mine, of a ruined pier on the downtown west side of Manhattan, taken with a toy camera.  The boat is long gone.

Dúirt mé leat go raibh mé breoite, Nov. 2024.  17.2 x 17.0 x 1.8 cm.  Letter beads, gelatin-silver photographic print, and resin.  (id#1704)

The text is Gaelic for “I told you I was sick”, which British humorist Spike Milligan wanted carved on his tombstone.  There was a long contestation about this irreverent epitaph with the Chichester Diocese, which finally gave consent provided it was written in Gaelic.  (Oscar Levant also asked for this, I hear.)  The photograph is one of mine, taken with a toy camera (using 127 format film) in the Trinity Church Cemetery in Washington Heights, NYC, between Broadway and Riverside Drive.

Tell Me What You See, Sept. 2024.  11.9 x 10.2 x 0.9 cm.  Letter beads, old mirror, and resin.  (id#1685)

The text is my invention.  The mirror is old and tarnished, such that it can't be used in the usual way.  Related to this I have thought of various old practices in which mirrors were used.  One is to set up two mirrors opposite one another, so that the reflections of reflections of reflections supposedly allow one to see the future, or one's own death.  I don't believe in this sort of thing, but the idea is fascinating.

Our Heads are Round So Our Thoughts Can Change Direction, Aug.-Sept. 2024.  12.7 x 13.6 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, newspaper reproduction of a painting/musical score by Wadada Leo Smith, and resin.   (id#1678)

The quotation is from the Dada-Surrealist artist Kurt Schwitters.  The image is of the U.S. composer-musician Wadada Leo Smith's painting, which he created to serve as the musical score for his "Fall" Symphony.  He made similar paintings for the other seasons of this cycle of symphonies, and for other compositions.  Smith's music is very difficult, austere, but beautiful.  (I also made a bumper sticker for my car with Schwitters's statement, combined with a phrenological diagram.)

I’ve Been in Your Shoes, Aug. 2024.  15,0 x 12,5 x 1,5 cm.  Letter beads, reproduction of a tantric diagram of the feet, clipped from a book, and resin.  (id#1673)

The quotation is from a volunteer emergency worker involved with a small organization that tried to save drug users from possible overdoses.  (He himself had been an addict who once nearly died of an OD.)  They had a hotline, and with their publicity, persuaded people who were about to fix to telephone, give their location, leave the front door unlocked, and stay in voice contact with an operator until it was clear that immediate danger was over.  If the operator got no more response from the person, an emergency worker was dispatched with an antidote, and if necessary to bring the person to a hospital.  "I’ve been in your shoes" is what he said to one of the people, full of gratitude, whose life he saved.  The illustration is from a book, "The Art of Tantra".

My People, My People, Aug.-Sept. 2024.  16,0 x 12,2 x 1,5 cm.  Letter beads, newspaper reproduction of a daguerreotype of an enslaved man (1850s), and resin.  (id#1672)

I'd have sworn that this quotation comes from Langston Hughes - I've associated it with him from when I first heard it.  But I find nothing to confirm this, and find it instead in a 1937 poem by Margaret Walker, “For My People”, from Poetry 1937 (the magazine), and from her This is My Century: New and Collected Poems (1989).  The photograph is said to be the first photographic portrait - a daguerreotype of about 1850 - of an enslaved person.

C'est l'infini dans le fini, December 2024.  18.3 x 13.0 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, reproduction of a fractal clipped from a book, and resin.  (id#1723)

The quotation is from Charles Baudelaire, and is applied on a Mandelbrot fractal from John Briggs's "Fractals - The Patterns of Chaos" (1992).  The image comes from the Mandelbrot set computed by Rollo Silver of Amygdala in San Cristobal, N.M..  I've been fascinated with natural patterns from way back; they were one of the main subjects of my photography when I began, and remain so.  They don't just happen to be that way - there are natural laws that determine these forms, and to me that is evidence of something marvelous.

Quick Watson the Lighter, Feb.-March 2024.  7.3 x 7.0 x 1.0 cm.  Letter beads, end leaves from rolling papers, and resin.  (id#1619)

It's well-known what Sherlock Holmes said to Dr. Watson when he started to feel symptoms of withdrawal from cocaine (which was legal in Britain in those days):  "Quick Watson, the needle!"  Some years back I read about a brilliant theoretical mathematician who was addicted to amphetamines.  His friends and colleagues finally persuaded him to quit that stuff.  He did, but after a week or so he confessed more or less like this: "Sorry, but I'm not worth a damn without the speed.  I just can't think like before."  And so he went back.

Déjà brew - we have all been beer before, March 2024.  14.9 x 18.8 x 1.5 cm.  Letter beads, reproduction of a painting by Jan Steen clipped from a book, and resin.  (id#1628)

The title is taken from Charlie Papazian's home-brew guide for beermakers, and puns (if it's not obvious) on the song "Dèjà vu" (1970) by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, where they sing "we have all been here before".  Thanks, Charlie, and thanks, guys.  I lent my copy of your book to a friend and never got it back, which is often the fate of the best books that one lends.  The background is Jan Steen's “Twelfth Night” (1662), showing a household making merry on the Twelfth Night of Christmas, or January 5th.  Tomorrow begins (for those who participate) Dry January, and not a moment too soon.  At left an old nun (or nursemaid) is teaching a small child to drink.  On the theme of eternally returning, I once saw scrawled in the men's room of a bar, "You only rent the beer".

Private Buddha, April 2024.  5.0 cm. diam..  Letter beads, reproduction of a Buddha statue, and resin. (id#1644)

In Buddhism, a private Buddha is a person who is content with his own personal enlightenment, and who does not care to help others reach enlightenment.  This is a badge with a safety pin on the back, and it can be worn on a jacket, as I do.

Ephphatha (Be Opened), Sept. 2024.   5.0 cm. diam.  Letter beads, hexagonal palladium mandala, and resin.  (id#1684)

The word is the Aramaic for “Be opened”, spoken by Jesus when he healed the man who was deaf and dumb (Mark 7:34).  More precisely, to be opened to the Holy Spirit.  This is a badge with a pin on the back, and it can be worn on a jacket, as I do.

Social Parasite, May 2024.  5.0 cm. diam.  Letter beads, clipping of a radiolarium from Harter’s Picture Archive, and resin.  (id#1647)

I'm making fun of myself as an artist, and as such useless to the greater society - at least according to some versions of Marxism that are intolerant of any activity that does not advance the socialist project in some concretely productive way - the only way that such people can imagine anything of value.  or them, artists are nothing more than scoial parasites, comparable to vagabonds, beggars, and thieves, whether common thieves or capitalists and industrialists.  This is a badge with a pin on the back, and it can be worn on a jacket, as I do.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo, May 2024.  5.0 cm. diam.  Letter beads, hexagonal palladium mandala, and resin.  (id#1656)

This is the mantra of Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, of which I was an adherent many years ago.  It means "I devote myself (namu) to the Mystic Law (myoho) of Simultaneous Cause and Effect (renge, the lotus flower) Through Sound (kyo)".  Yes, in Japanese it's more elegant and a whole lot shorter.  "Kyo" means a number of things; above all, here, as an image of the long dimension of a bolt of cloth, it's a symbol of infinite time, and of and sound and vibration.  This is not the place to explain much further.  Like the others nearby, this is a badge with a pin on the back, and it can be worn on a jacket.

Kan Ya Ma Kan (“It was, and it was not”), April 2024.  5.0 cm. diam. x 0.9 cm. ht..  Letter beads, playing card from Asia hand-painted on wood veneer, and resin.  (id#1644)

This, I understand, is the equivalent in Hindi (or some other Asian language) for "Once upon a time", the familiar opening of many a folk tale in the West.

The Last Refuge of Scoundrels, May 2024.  Letter beads, wooden eagle plaque, and resin.  (id#1651)

Samuel Johnson said "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels".  Here I sued an old plaque, awarded to me in high school for an industrial arts project (a set of architectural drawings for a house).  I'm a bit sorry that the bald eagle has been appropriated as a symbol of US patriotism.  If you were lying there dead or unconscious in the desert, he'd pick your eyes out like any vulture, not a bird with the best reputation.  Correctly, I feel, that professional sports teams have mostly stopped using the names of native Americans for their teams.  Often animals are chosen instead.  A step in the right direction, anyway, given that the animals will never know what we are about.  But we know so little about animals' true natures that I think we may make mistakes in this too.  Are ravens racenous?  Are thieving magpies larcenous?