Dangerhart's Studio

This is another commission I am working on for a local park. Eventually it will consist of a mated pair of Gambel's Quail on skates with a tower of acrobatic chicks balanced on their backs. Silly? Yes. But it should be pretty keen. There will be another male quail with one or two chicks skating at the opposite end of the park.
This quail may undergo a gender change (involving the removal of the topknot feather). I'm still considering...

 The Flying Spaghetti Monster appeared upon the prow and led us through a maze of reefs upon moonlit waters, his noodley appendanges touching us all! He was greatly pleased to find our swarthy crew of Pastafarian sea pirates, and ran our pursuing Corsican enemies upon hidden shoals. We came about and loosed a volley of cannon fire, snapping their main mast and opening them amidships to the shark infested waters. A fierce and bloody struggle was avoided, when they offered up their greatest and only treasure: the fairest lady of Atlantis- Elizabeth. FSM pronounced us as "Fork and Spoon before a great Pastafarian feast", then he threw a great meat ball around the moon, and catching it again, created a high tide that carried us far and away.
Here we are at our nuptials, where the FSM did bid me to inspect the wondrous booty, and know his blessings.

While I was out of the country two public art commissions came through for me! I made this small mobile last week to play around with some of the concerns that will arise at full scale. The finished form will be 30'x28'x10' and hang in the glass lobby of a new library (the library will be finished next September- they have just poured the foundation...) The disks will be Himalayan Salt Stone inscribed with consonants, and the cubes will be industrial Salt Block, ie salt licks, inscribed with vowels. My next step is to place a small order of salt stone and begin playing with a few hanging methods.
The second commission is for a local neighborhood park- I'll run a post on that soon...

The "sun dogs" it throws across the ceiling/walls look like colored water reflections or the aurora borealis...

We really like how it changes when lit- a pretty ceiling decoration during the day, and magic water color at night.

 

Here we are in Greece getting married, again! Well, not in Greece, but in international waters near the island of Corfu. Elizabeth's parents celebrated their 50th Wedding anniversary by inviting Elizabeth's sister Allison and Allison's husband Peter, and Elizabeth and I to join them in Rome and board the largest sailing ship in the world for an 11 day trip around Italy. Things just progressed from there...

The captain performed our "ring ceremony" while we symbolically took the helm. Nearly half the passengers on board swarm in the background as an adopted wedding party.
The Royal Clipper unfurled her 42-sail 56,000 square foot party dress for the special night, so we could dance under the sails on open water to the "musical stylings" of our on-board pianist, -Laszlo-!

Below is a nice shot of our little group of landlubbers. The tall fellow in the background is Peter, standing behind his wife Allison (Elizabeth's not-twin sister) in the floral print dress. Walter and Kaye are the happy parents of the bride, and Elizabeth grins ear-to-ear while I man the wheel.

Here she is with the sails up: The Royal Clipper. A great ship to take to all the historic port cities through Italy, Greece, Croatia and Montenegro. And a fine vessel to get hitched on as well.
more to come...