This piece is off to a new home!

It is called StoryBook or Story Teller

It had been part of a show I had at Placewares in Gualala, California, right on the west coast. [the ‘Gu’ in Gualala is pronounced like “Wa’ not ‘Gu’ like in guacamole] My dear friends and owners of the most Amazing Shop/Gallery Placewares are two of the most creative people I know. They Inspire me.

Long time designers (DR in Cambridge, Mass in ’70’s etc) and innovators, inventors, artists, taste makers and partners, Maynard and Lu have kindly carried and shown my work. Check out their about page and follow some of their links, I assure you, you will be Most interested in these 2! Maynard makes these wonderful visually clever, complex and warm hearted “Looking Boxes“.

StoryBook has been reluctant to leave their shop, and you can understand why, it is such a creative playful, interesting place to be!

StoryBook is part of an on going series I have been working on called Elegant Turns. This piece is made up of 5 movable sections, each part has 3 different images so when you turn them (and yes, you can) you get different combinations that make up one image*. I never had one set story in mind when I made this piece but stories kept coming up, flooding me with imagery and that guided this piece.

Now StoryBook is off to make new ever changing stories. But the stories it collected during it’s stay at Placewares will part of it be forever.

* Elegant Corpse:
It is simply one drawing, usually of a person or animal, drawn by 3 different people. Onto a piece of paper folded three times, each person draws a head on the first 1/3 of the paper and folds it back and under leaving marks where the torso should begin on the second fold. This done, each person then passes their hidden ‘heads’ to their neighbor.  Then everyone draws the torso leaving marks for the legs in the last 1/3 of the paper. This is then it is passed around again and everyone draws the legs and feet. What results is a usually very amusing and somewhat curious character containing the talents of three different wits.  I have transformed this 2 Dimensional matrix into a 3 Dimensional form which enable the combinations to increase geometrically.