Wednesday 2 December 2009

Birth
















Made with Marta cavicchioni

Workshop






Bedroom



Spoke clock in basement

I find working with what ever tools and materials (preferably recycled) i have at dispostion allows the hand, the eye, and of course imagination, to work together playfully and creatively. It's like as if depriving oneself (or excepting one's economical reality and not being able to avail) of the luxury of ordering various parts; perhaps even the most shiney, perfectly proportioned components to make an unusual wall clock, the hand, the eye and the imagination are forced to perform together to create somthing, hopefully beautiful or at least expressive. In this basement where i have my workshop i found all the parts i needed to make this piece (a bicycle rim, 2 spanners, spokes, nipples and sprocket). All except the quarz movement which i found in my Dad's shed in Ireland. Some of the much appreciated inheritance left by the passed away, much loved clockmaker/printer of Athlone town.
In this work i see some of my much nutured hope for the future where i think changing our consumeristic way of living doesn't mean going back to stone ages but going forward creatively and adapting to the idea of not throwing away everything we have just to make room for more goods, more and more produced without respect for workers or the planet and everything on it.
Fortunately i know i'm one of many who shares this opinion, so maybe i could save you the moral and philosophical lecture and just invite you to look at this piece just for what it is..an old race bike wheel transfomed into a clock.

Spoke lamp







Bolt Clock


This piece was inspired by my time spent in bike workshops in Rome. An underworld in a car domininated city where one digs through nuts, bolts, spanners, bent bike rims, various gears and various bike components to create something personal. Usually astrange bike. In this case a clock!
I liked the creative and stylised aspect of the bike workshops (in rome "ciclofficine") but
in many of these places the very bike components seem to be part of culture which are used almost as a flag to distinguish cyclists from the others (automobilists). I prefer to find things in common with people that are different than me. Differences between people shouldn't be a problem...they should be an excuse to communicate and understand. I don't have a car but i hope car drivers will see something in my work.
All the parts of this clock were recycled except for the 6mm bolts which form the roman numerals which i bought at the local hardware store. The rim is from a mountain bike and the centre gear is from a childs bike. The spanners which make the hands were cut in half and joined with bike spokes. The movement is quarz.