The Time Keeper
Well, I was busy creating a house on chicken legs at the Demonstration week, just…because. It had been suggested that it needed horns, so horns it got. I also figured it needed teeth, so teeth it got. What now I thought…..
It happened that the Otago Art Society was having its Spring exhibition with a theme of Past, Present and Future. What does a house on chicken legs got to do with this theme I mused.
The House underway at the Demonstration Week
I had thought the idea from the ‘chicken leg’ house came from Slavic folklore, a fearsome hag living in a house on chicken legs, but it may have equally come from my fridge door. Many grandparents only have pictures of cats and cute things that their grandchildren have drawn on their fridge. Amongst my grandchildren I have a boy who loves horror. I have had ‘Chucky’, complete with blood-covered knives and also ‘House Head’, a fictional spider-like creature with a house for a head (apparently a cousin of Siren Head)
‘House Head’ drawn by Aiden Nyhof
So, I have a vast range of used jewellery, beads and trinkets. Amongst the collection of bits and bobs there were some old watches. ‘Aha!’ I thought, if I dangle a watch face inside it can be some sort of time something. So ‘The Time Keeper’ idea was born.
I thought it looked sinister enough to be some sort of organic time protector from a story so then got to thinking, ‘What else does it need?’
Ladders, certainly for the characters charged with checking and maintaining the structure with it’s precious clock, and probably a couple of characters hanging off the side. Oh, and also it also needed ‘glow-in-the-dark’ teeth instead of standard teeth, inside the roof and on the watch.
This got me thinking about Marie Curie, radioactivity and the ‘Radium Girls’ who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials and hands around the 1920’s.
‘The Time Keeper’ in progress
The watch face and glow-in-the-dark clay got me thinking about radioactivity.
So, while I was at it, I thought I needed a time machine as well. For this one I also found a little wind-up toy and used the mechanism. It can be wound up, but who knows what time you might end up in, especially at night when the glow-in-the-dark is glowing!
Close-up of the Time Machine, all the white pieces are glow-in-the-dark clay.
I really enjoy seeing an idea take hold, grow and change. It’s great to make something really strange just for the fun of it!
The finished pieces on display.
