Show & Tell

Well hello there ! Ok class, for today's session of show and tell -- an African skull smasher !!


Looking like a work of art taken from the new Musée du Quai Branly* (Paris 7ème--?, Rive Gauche --- see picture below), this slick looking instrument of death in the right panel is assembled from an ebony African statuette and a gazelle or antelope's horn.

If you're in any way an animal rights activist, or vegan -- please rest assured that no furry quadrupeds were hurt before, during or after the creation of these doors, or as a result thereof. (The bipeds on the other hand were savagely beaten with just such blunt objects).

So anyway, to give this skull smasher an extra air of authenticity, Franklin added some little bones on strings, a blade made from a larger bone, and some feather / fluff. This is so we can get away with calling this art and not weaponry, really.

You see our strategy is esthetically pleasing skull-clubs today, sleek weapons of mass-destruction tomorrow. (Obviously, that's where the money is. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.)


Also, the little warrior boy is there for comic relief. It's not a social commentary on boy-soldiers in Africa. Don't read too much into this -- the fact that he's naked only means that Franklin couldn't find him a mini-tuxedo in all the garage sales he ravaged.

The horn btw (that's "by the way" btw), is for stabbing the brain once the skull has been *ahem* tenderized.


As for the little doll hands betting their little shirts on the bingo board, well this is just clever design.

So the door panel is actual linear from top left to bottom left, to right: When kids gamble (top left), they are forced to take up arms to get out of debt (small spartan boy with shield ans spear, bottom left). As a result, they are forced to resort to hard core violence just to survive (necessity is the mother of all invention, skull cruncher).


And it's our own socially conscious way of saying: "Kids you better stay in school, don't resort to violence and don't gamble. And drugs are bad."

*

Use bronzer with great caution!

So it's occurred to me that I posted the same picture twice last time. It's only my pleasure then to add a couple more to make up for that oversight...


"J'aime les bonbons", french for "I adoor candies", large overcoat buttons, and the back of a violin (it's certainly a Stravinsky). The edge of the frame is padded along the inside with ivory piano keys which were collected from an abandoned piano off of Commercial Street, Provincetown (Cape Cod, Mass).


The metal molds are actually to make 'madelaines' - a sweet little brioche cake. The musical score folded like a geisha's fan is a piece from Igor Stravinsky's Petrushka (... I just put that in there but it's probably not true.)


More from that 'Petrushka' ballet... An ancient and enchanted flacon of 'bronzer'. All those who have applied this mysterious bronzer at around the third Sunday of July are said to have become recluses, mangy and prone to random and unpredictable fits of epileptic seizures. Also, there is an old thermometer, a parchment, and buttons, among other things.

Hey does any one know how I can let people leave their email addresses?

The people must be notified of upcoming portes epiques exhibitions!!