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Ich wünsche mit Personen in Verbindung kommen, die dieselbe künstlerische Interesse wie ich haben. Deshalb habe ich daran gedacht, den ersten Schritt zu machen, und regelmäßig über meine letzte Arbeitsvorgänge zu berichten.
Started:
last update 25 July, 2004
 Finished:
Feb 24, 2004

: "Owl" - Acrylic and collage of computer circuits, writing nibs (pen points), eating forks, small screws, CDs, broken mirror pieces, on a styrofoam form - set on an old brick (58 x 30 x 25)
July 25, 2004
 
 
The idea

Feb. 24
I simply like owls, maybe because they have big eyes (it seems) and an interestingly simple geometry.

I thought of the owl immediately as my brother Bertrand gave me several mini audio disks ( I did not even know they existed) about 8cm in diameter. It was in Paris. Also for some time I wanted to make a bird sculpture and decorate it with penpoint nibs (which I found by the 100s at the Flee Market in Paris)

When back in Siena I place the disks on a thick piece of styrofoam and started to cut it and burn it to shape an owl.
Execution

April 6
Lighting the eyes
It was not a difficult problem in itself, but... the installation should be such that it would be easy to replace the LED's when burned and to access the batteries for recharge or exchange. This last problem was fairly simple to solve. I just put the batteries in a small box at the bottom back of the owl. The box has a cover that opens up easily to access the battery. This cover could be decorated like the rest of the bird so that it would barely be noticeable.

The easy access to the LED's was a significant challenge.


Click to see how it was done

March 15
I covered the belly with 1,000 small screws and some golden nails.
I used longer cupper screws for the beak and small pieces of white and yellow electric wires around and under the beak.

The rest of the front and the head was decorated with nibs. I had blakened some by dropping them in water after holding them on a flamme until turned red from the heat. Some others were sprayed with gold. So I had 3 types of nibs to choose from.

Behind the disks in the eye's cavities I glued small pieces of broken mirror and decided to install small LEDs in the middle of the eyes.

April 12
Once the LEDs replacement problem solved, I started de corating the front of the owl.
I used 1000 aluminum screws for the central belly, and about 400 nibs, brilliant, gold and black. The nibs were glued one by one.

 
Decorating the back of the owl

The back before decorating shows the center position of the switch to illuminate the LEDs, and the battery box at the bottom.

The decoration shall be with pieces of printed circuits, golden and dark brown, cut in long narrow rectangle with a triangular base.


April 13 - Picture progress report


July 25
I let this piece rest for almost 2 months - until the glues were dried enough to work on cleaning.
Used many eating forks on top back of the head and on the bottom part by the legs, also 2 forks make the beak. Also made the legs slightly longer.
Cleaned the connections between pieces on the entire piece. That's it!


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