Time Piece I and II

On the bottom, Time Piece I~Deconstruction/Reconstruction. On the top Time Piece II~Corporation Orchestration. Each is 8 in x 24 in and 4 inches from the wall at the center niche construction, with a graduating down as you move to the edges. These are on canvas with polystyrene packing being the base for the architectural aspects. 

     Here's the thing. These took years for me to complete from the time I saw the printer packing pieces that together formed a niche and dug them out of the trash. There was the inspiration. I love niches. So then I found the other polystyrene forms to continue the building-like look. Then at a garage sale a year later, I found the plastic scrolly parts. I mounted it all on canvas. And they sat like that for months. Maybe a year. Over that year, I futzed with what to put in the niches. Some things appealed to me, but nothing quite communicated to me. 

     Finally, I focused on a couple of travel clocks that I had. Time. That drives me crazy--time does. So I started to take the clocks apart. But I didn't get very far with that. One needs special tools for that sort of thing. But I had the parts of the clock I had managed to separate just lying in the niches when another artist came into my studio and saw my construction/destruction under way. She had a bagful of watch parts she had been planning on turning into jewelry years ago but hadn't. She generously offered the parts to me. 

     Yes! Just what I'd been wanting to come my way. So I started laying the watch parts into the niches. But then what? How to make a statement about the artificiality of time? That's when a winged scarab came into my life. The winged scarab to Egyptians was a symbol of eternity. The Egyptians saw the actions of the dung beetle as analogous to the sun being pushed across the sky. AHA. Artificial time in all its destruction juxtaposed with a symbol of natural time. The winged scarabs are photocopies that I had to waterproof. I added them to the niches and added watch parts to the place where the wings touch at the top part of each scarab. 

     Now, what goes at the apex? I had one engraved watch back. And lo and behold a watch face that would fit into a watch face surround I had. And that watch face is a mighty representation of corporate America, which tries to orchestrate time and all other parts of our lives. So I put a minute hand into the palm of that symbol of corporate America. Does it make a statement on the artificiality of time? Does it make a statement about how we have to negate our own circadian rhythms in order to feed the corporate maw?