Art Love Life

This automaton is a working poker machine - the wheel spins and the magpie swallows your coins while the great Aussie icon Ned Kelly looks on silently with his smug little duck, quacking out a rationale while the bitch goddess of success howls below. But unfortunately the pictures on the wheel never line up for the player. Its made of huon pine, oak, steel and scrap bronze, motors and aluminium cylinder are parts of an old duplicating machine. There is a Jayco timer that turns it off and on when a coin is proferred, but most of the electronics on the circuit board are purely there for a lovely backlight.

Beetle occasional table

These long horned beetles are the adult phase of all or some of the wichiti grubs that are 'bush tucker' . The sculpture is made of iron bent over an armature and welded with a MIG. The wings are salvaged red myrtle.

The Martyrdom of St. Catherine

Have embarked on yet another artistic channel - intaglio and this is my first effort (it has been a long and difficult procedure getting it right. It still isn't but the plate is almost worn out before I even get an edition out of it. This is after a stone carving I saw at the entrance of the Thanh Cathedral in Alsace. St.Catherine was to be broken on the wheel, but it was miraculously destroyed so they boiled her alive instead.

The Noble Eightfold Path

Fluoros in the oak box illuminate a glass mandala that morphs into the bars of a cage. Within a rat is trying to nut out which of several optional bars he can press to take the cookie.

Post Modern Swamphen

This steel sculpture (backed by a peacock tail here) was created to a 1.5x scale with proportions taken from the measured bones of a roadkilled bird. The head is morphed more towards a seagull, and it stalks through the mud over the detritus of modernism (old bent universal beams are the grass sticking out of the mud) calling plaintively no doubt.

Galinula Victrix (the victorious swamphen)

The bird itself is 47 cm. tall and is created with a wire feed welder, filling in over an armature, the feathers are steel flat bar. Bronze copies pending.
The painting in the background is a section of an acrylic seaweed painting (printed with a piece of seaweed) on hardboard.

Swamp hen breastbone

This is a sterling silver pendant, made from a cast of the breast bone of a swamphen, a flightless Tasmanian rail - almost as it was picked up on the road. It is hardly recognizable as part of a bird - the normal keel that anchors the flight muscles has completely disappeared although they do use their wings while running its only in extremis. The stone is a 7 carat pear- shaped lab ruby, nearly perfect - if it was mined it might have been owned by the Shah of Iran or somesuch. But thanks to Chinese technology and Ebay you can own such a stone for about 5 bucks, and only your crystallographer can know for sure.