Time Warp

"Presence is Fire" , an ensemble that will be installed in an actual fireplace (no burning please, although it probably wouldn't hurt porcelain which fires at 2300 degrres F).... includes a set of andirons over a pile of embers, and newly set with a load of fresh logs. The fireplace figures into the December Chlora story, with home and hearth decorated for Christmas. Above the mantel hangs a cuckoo clock. Like most cuckoo clocks, it drives everybody nuts. So Chlora decides to do something about this.

The clock was based on a Black Forest model sent to us some time ago by our friends the Dyllicks who live in Freiburg. Plus I found lots of others online, most with hunting themes, some with evergreen trees. Your run-of-the-mill cuckoo clock is basically wood-toned and roughly carved. A phoenix rising from the fire seemed to be needed on this one, so I found an image of one carved on an English chest from 1890; nicely shaped and gilded

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Since Chlora's Christmas story gets into fawns, I also copied a deer on my clock, and the fir trees. Chlora paints the cuckoo red (of course; she needs more redbirds). And then the clock needed more color and I happened upon a polychromed one in an antique mall.

To top it off, what could be cornier than Salvator Dali's Persistence of Memory with its melting clocks? I painted it over the bend in the roof...hence the title, "Time Warp." This may be the only Dali I really like. It is quite small, at MOMA, and is one of those paintings that fascinated me as a child. The obnoxious clock gets thrown into the fire, in Chlora's story, on Christmas night, along with her wooden train and her training bra. Here it all is in MY fire, the kiln!