"Fallen Limb"
Prefer to see it as a short film? Click here!
(For reasons I do not understand the video looks fine on a phone but is blurry on a desktop computer.)
22"x70". finished October 28, 2026
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| "Fallen Limb" for god's sakes, click to enlarge |
Artiste Statement:
Forests perpetually recycle themselves, making destruction a precondition for new life. More than a little phobic, I admit that I hate bugs. And yet, without them, there could be no human beings. Insects perform the essential, if unglamorous, work of devouring the dead and making room for the living.
I am struck by how creativity—from making babies to making art—depends on making space for something new. In Fallen Limb, I am exploring the possibility of finding beauty in what we might otherwise find repellent by rendering these insects in jewel-like colors and intricate patterns, hopefully transforming creatures into objects of wonder. It is an attempt to rehabilitate these creepy creatures, celebrate their indispensable role in the ecosystem, and suggest that even decay can be beautiful because it brings with it the promise of a renewal of life.
Artless statement:
Before this piece began, I had been thinking about my (undiagnosed) ADHD all wrong.
I was imagining I could focus for a few minutes of time...
BUT maybe, just maybe...I should be thinking in INCHES instead of minutes. This piece was created to work with my 2 INCH attention span.
And this worked kind of ridiculously well...
Detail pics! Also click to enlarge! See what a 2-inch attention span looks like!
Rather Lengthy Technical Stuff:
First off, I don’t remember where I got the seeds of the idea to do this piece. If I had to guess, I would say, I was excited by the bug panels in the dome and I thought I should do some beetles.
It would be a mistake to gloss over the fact that I have done this before in a piece from 1998 called “Roadkill Ophelia”.
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"Roadkill Ophelia" 1998, 19" x 41"
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One thing I did was some thumbnail sketches, roughing out the concept.
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| As you can see, at first it was vertical |
These are the steps I followed after that to make the BUGS only. (The background is more standard: fired enamel, Stencil Black, on glass)
1. Made a dummy sheet of a bunch of bugs—about 30.
2. Redrew the bugs in my own hand with pencil (these bugs were shaded).
3. Scanned the drawings and colored them in photoshop.
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4. Drew a log in pencil.
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Pencil drawing. A real pencil drawing.
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5. Scanned the log and colored it in Photoshop.
6. Created several images in Photoshop for my own pleasure and edification. This was entirely unnecessary in order to make a stained glass window, but it did create excitement and feelings of attachment. READ and SEE all about it here!
7. Generated photo sandblast stencils from black and white pencil drawings.
a. Redrew the bugs in black and white with no grey tones or scratchy lines, with an outline around what would be the shape of the glass piece.
b. Generated these images backward and forward in two sizes
c. Created a set of all the bugs as silhouettes—with no patterns on them—but shapes and generated these images backward and forward in two sizes.
d. created bitmaps and uploaded them to Rayzist Photomask.
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| Bitmaps for stencils |
8. When the stencils arrived, I put half the stencils on Red/Clear Lambert’s Glass and the other half on Blue/Clear.
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| Rayzist photomask in all its glory |
9. Sandblasted them in two stages.
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| Red flash glass after being sandblasted with above stencil |
10. Cleaned them up and traced the outlines on the non-sandblasted side with gold paint pen.
11. Cut the shapes.
12. Ground the shapes. (So, for 277, that’s 554 shapes)
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| SO. MANY. BUGS. |
13. Engraved and filed the bugs as necessary (I did this in batches of about 30).
14. Painted the bugs. (with paint that fires on)
15. Silver stained the bugs.
16. Engraved the bugs again.
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| so many 2" adding up! |
17. Laminated the layers together with Loctite 349.
18. Ground all 277 bugs AGAIN.
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| Call the exterminator! |
19. Laid out the bugs on drawing in order to come up with a pattern.
20. Ground the bugs yet AGAIN to fit the pattern.
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| I hate grinding. |
21. Copperfoiled the bugs.
22. Affixed them to a dummy sheet of tracing paper on top of the cartoon (so as not to ruin it) with double stick tape.
23. Tack soldered bugs together.
THEN, I moved on to creating the background...
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| Studio cat, Booberry, demands work stoppage! |
