Many years ago I was looking around my living room and feeling it was cluttered. It had items for practicing music, and sound systems for computer as well as TV, not to mention the lamp and table. It occurred to me that I could hide some of these items in a sizable piece of art on the wall.
With this in mind I built the piece with its own guitar, guitar amplifier, and clip to hold music. It also contained a cd player, input for a phone, stereo system, and a light. All of this was put on a main power switch in the middle of the artwork.
It really eliminated a lot of stuff from the floor. A huge bonus in a cramped apartment. The self contained guitar practice station was awesome. When I showed it in public it was great to have one of the pieces of art providing the music which was a playlist on an mp3 player.
The other piece of art you see in the photos is an exploration of the visual I was going for. The mechanical vibe in the background comes from my fascination with pre-transistor electronics and old Frankenstein lab props. I love gauges and voltmeters and how they tap along in response to an engine, or the music of a 70s stereo amplifier. So I identified what it was the gauges were measuring, labeling each one with descriptive terms and funny pop culture references.
It began with a visual about all this complicated machinery providing a suitable growth environment for something beautiful and different from itself. I imagined that this machine produced music which is personified symbolically by the Foxglove plant. I chose the foxglove for two reasons. It was in my garden and I had a readily available reference from which to paint the flower part of this on watercolor paper. The other was that because of its dangerous yet life saving nature as a common cardiac medication. The plant embodies my music preferences perfectly. Poisonous but a little of what the heart might need. This one is also a three dimensional mixed media since elements of it extend beyond the canvas surface.
Ultimately these two artistic expressions don't have to coexist together. It's more that they formed simultaneously. However the ultimate goal is to take the experience and lessons gained from the first multimedia piece and create a new one for myself with more modern components, hiding things like chargers and of a course a nice sound system. I will choose the components first, then build its art around them.
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