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mixed techniques

Flight of Whimsy


I planned to create a series of works that resemble steampunk for quite some time. There were always these bits and pieces floating in my head. For years I jotted down the ideas in my notepad along with some sketches and drafts for possible future works. Sometimes these were complete drawings, other times just incomplete parts of something yet to be thought out.

Shortly after my exhibition in Chicago, I came down with flu.  I was sick and exhausted, sleeping in late, but one day I felt better, clearly the cold was going away, and I was excited to get back to work. As I reached for my notepad on the top shelf, I knocked down a coffee pot I set out on the table earlier.  I lost my balance and there went my notepad flying off the shelf, several of my drafts falling down like leaves, landing squarely in the middle of the spilled puddle. For a moment I felt cranky, not so much for the damaged drafts, but because I had to make a new pot of coffee and more importantly clean this mess up. I sat back down for a moment, looking at the chaos. I leaned in and there was this fish, another mechanical piece and some other drafts, all stuck together. Coffee saturated the drafts like concrete, binding them together into a unified perfect piece.  Normally I would`ve jumped to get the paper towels and cleanup, but some strange force kept me motionless, allowing this process to sink in. And there it was. What if I blended the whimsical with the steampunk? I scooped up another notepad, grabbed a pencil and started drafting this piece out while it was fresh in my head. I liked it, it seemed neat, whimsical and tale-like, very imaginative, “Flight of Whimsy” was born. There was just one problem, somebody still had to cleanup this mess and I was out of coffee…