As soon as I began to play with the open wire figure, I noticed the shadows. They are two dimensional line drawings in light. Two dmensional line drawings of three dimensional line drawings! Is your head spinning yet?

The shadow drawings flatten the image. Photographs also flatten the image, and because the wire figure is transparent, you can see the back right through the front. When you look at the work in person, your stereo vision tells you what is in front and what is in back. But in photos, and in shadows, it can be hard to tell if the figure is facing toward you or away from you.

Now let’s add another twist to all of this confusion. I promise, your head will spin before we are done.

Much of my work is designed to hang in mid air. The life sized figures only weigh about 20 pounds and hang easily. The piece in this video was hung at Studios on the Park in Paso Robles in August of 2017 for an exhibit called Three Part Harmony. It was a three person show with Colleen Gnos and Larry LeBrane.

It hung from a single strand of 1/16″ aircraft cable, and from time to time on the opening night I would give it a spin. I discovered that a whole new dimension was revealed in the rotation of the piece.

But wait! there’s more. The next video is of a piece I hung at one of the Phantom Shows put on by the Sculpture Group which was affiliated with the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art back in the day. It occurred in January of 2018.The effect was to project two shadow line drawings on the wall that were clearly representing the same piece. But each was completely unique with respect to the other. And of course, I gave the piece a spin now and then. It would turn around 15 or so times, wind the cable, and then spin back the other way, unwinding the cable. This process took about 5 minutes to complete, and I found that the viewers of the spin were transfixed. Every time I spun it, a crowd gathered to watch it, and did not move on until it stopped. It was as if the constantly changing drawings on the wall and the three dimensional line drawing spinning in the room were too much to absorb. It’s not quite the same in video, but take a look.