Video

Scrying the Present in the Shadow of a Doubt (The Beetle of Sulawesi)

2010
Assemblage with interpolating spectral optical lens and stag beetle
29 x 34 x 3 inches
Reflected images multiply and change color as the viewer changes perspective. A beetle’s image reflects into infinitely into darkness.
Collection of the city of Houston. Currently displayed at Houston Hobby Airport.

Looking closely into the glass, one will see multiples of reflected images. The interpolating spectral optical lens is my own optical invention and that’s all I will say about that secret. By moving horizontally, changes in the color spectrum occur. Some may conjure more metaphysical images… and with proper lighting one will also see a real beetle, its image reflecting infinitely into darkness. This gorgeous monster is Prosopocoilus Bruijni, a stag beetle from the island of Sulawesi (formerly Celebes) in Indonesia. A bringer of luck and protector from lightning, it lives most of its life in the dark as a vulnerable larvae inside a rotting log. It emerges, dare I say, to the other side, flying and armored, into the color and fresh air of Southeast Asia.

This piece has so much in common with another, The Dark Glass created the same year so I will quote from a statement for that sculpture:

“Here—as with the Noumenon series (2005-2008)—I explore my obsession with the idea of endless depth, endless emptiness and endless darkness. I have always worked in a parallel with the surrealist modus operandi, delving into the subconscious for inspiration and trying to get a glimpse of what’s on the ‘other side.’ The Wicked Witch has her crystal ball, Nostradamus had a pool of dark water, the Aztecs, their scrying mirrors of black onyx… Certain patterns and color composites in the glass return me to the world of tryptamines and other bad tasting etheogens that have given me a peek or two through the fence cracks, through which the art of being becomes amplified, and concrete meaning becomes less and less important: A philosophy that I am applying to my art more and more. We make such a big deal of everything; what is on the other side just is, and there is beauty in that simplicity.”

I have employed meters and gauges in past work as symbols for indicating and testing condition. Take that notion where you will here, but a decade later I used them as devices for testing reality in a piece called Ontological Catastrophe (2019). The black, stacked framework was inspired in part by Frank Lloyd Wrights 1924 Ennis House construction blocks.