Acoustopus
Its no secret that I have a soft spot for cephalopods (Giant Squid, Octovarius, Waste Deep and many more). This one came into being as a result of a gift of a broken acoustic guitar from my mother in law (thanks!). People often give me broken and unwanted things, and in this case it proved quite useful. I just recently destroyed several rocking chairs for my “Nowhere Fast” piece. The remaining parts paired perfectly with the guitar to form the creature pictured above.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
In a major test of my patience I decided to use a huge bag of wooden beads as suction cups. Each bead had to be drilled out by hand, and attached to the tentacle with a single brass screw. Somewhere between 300-400 beads were used. If I never do that again it will be too soon.
At this stage I don’t expect the piece to have any moving parts. None the less I still want it to “perform” in some way so I am working on back-lighting the whole thing. The piece is intended to mount on a wall. The circular plate (above right) will bolt to the wall. The square shaped bracket (above left) will attach to the inside of the guitar, or head if you will, and in turn attach to the wall bracket. The idea is to install three bright green light bulbs in the sockets and hopefully achieve an even green glow on the wall behind the piece. I have done this with some success once before with my “Centipede” sculpture. I realize that this hardware may seem a little over designed, but I have learned that it is worth a little extra time to have something that is easy to install, or better yet can be installed by someone who isn’t me. The hexagonal shape of the tube means that the piece can also be mounted at different angles without slipping.
I still face the considerable puzzle of how all the tentacles will attach permanently inside the head (they are simply lying on the floor in the photo above) so wish me luck.
