A Monster, in Miniature

If you've admired Tim Bruckner's model kits from afar, but never felt you had the space or money to get one, there's a new reason for you to visit the Tim Bruckner Shop. Hot on the heels of his "Ode to Joy" miniaturization, Tim has shrunk down yet another of his kits to make it more affordable and less voluminous. The original Monster kit, inspired by the Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein, stands 12.5 inches tall with its base, but the new mini Monster kit stands only 5.75 inches tall, with all of the same detail! Additionally, Tim has made a slight modification to the sculpt, wrenching free one of the Monster's neck bolts and leaving behind a knot of twisted wires. So whether you'll be painting it or simply admiring the sculpt au naturel, head on over to TimBrucknerShop.com to get one today!

It's Ludwig Van!

Tim has proven time and time again that he is a master of the fantastic. But he's also a master of the naturalistic, as anyone who's seen his portraits can attest. One of his portraits, "Ode to Joy" -- his rendering of a laughing Ludwig Van Beethoven -- has been offered as a limited edition, but it is now available in model kit form, and much smaller, to boot. Standing only 5.75 inches tall with its base, this new kit is now available over in the Tim Bruckner Shop (www.timbrucknershop.com), and at $50 is an affordable way to show your love of the composer (or the movie "A Clockwork Orange").

Mr. B's Bookkeeper: Introducing the First Model Kit with Modular Expression

In recent months, Tim (Bruckner, Pop Sculpture co-author) has immersed himself in the world of garage kits, a category he's dabbled in in the past, but one he is now exploring fully through his online store, timbrucknershop.com. His latest kit, Mr. B's Bookkeeper, features a new innovation that hasn't been seen in kits before -- ME (modular expression) busts. With six different eye pieces (three left, three right) and six different mouth pieces (three top, three bottom), the bust can be assembled 81 different ways, which has to be some kind of a record. Pick yours up in the shop, and check out all of the different ways it can be assembled below!

After Fishing

"Last will and Testament" by Mariusz Hermanowicz (with Zygmunt Hermanowicz) was an instant crush for me.

After his father's death, Mariusz Hermanowicz discovers, among the things the father left, boxes filled with fishing lures of his father's own design. Some of the lures are finished, many seem more like prototypes, projects. There are also drawings, parts, materials. A universe of lures.
The father, you see, loved fishing. But he was never satisfied with the lures he had. He kept saying how he would make some of his own, which would allow him to catch many more fish. And kept picking things up from the ground, saying they would be perfect for the lure. "But I had never heard that he ever started doing anything from the things he found".
So what are these objects? Have they ever been used? Were they supposed to be used?
"Did he ever try to catch fish with them? Would any fish get caught on them?"

I am in love with this project.
Need I say more?
Would you like me to rationalize love?
(Of course, if you are reading any of this, it is because, like readers of poetry, you believe words go far beyond any silly logos-stories.)

Here are my quasireasons, then:
I love that violence can turn into passion which can turn into art.

The ideal sublimation.
The utopic idea that someone can move from aggression to beauty.

The uncertain heritage. The ambiguity of what remains.

I guess, it is also the ambiguity of what is already there, of what we do, of our own motivations.

The bait transforms into the fish.

The challenge of seducing the fish becomes the fish's seduction.
The man identifies with the fish to the extent that these little pieces of metal, plastic and wood become a representation of fish, or more, like African masks, they are now a reality of their own, with their peculiar morphology and purposeful abstraction.

Yet there is nothing pragmatic about this purpose. There is madness in this reason.

It is a mad inner dialogue with a fish that will never be caught. The fish that blissfuly remains the being-to-correspond. Transforming these carefuly selected pieces of material into the lure that caught me.

(Be sure to see the entire gallery - the series develops at a great pace.)

Looking at the robots, I think

David Lewandowski, going to the store



Robot maker Azusa Amino recently won the Robot Japan 2 Dance competition with his 23-centimeter-high Toko Toko Maru robot. 


- they are the un-ego, the dream of letting go of the source. They are a life whose source is the non-live, whose origin is not identical, so a different, non-human causality comes into place. The source, here, is the source-code. And that makes all the difference. Saying it is matter brought to life explains nothing. Think, rather, of metamorphosis, of alchemy, of things becoming not-themselves. (Of us becoming not-ourselves). The robot is not a robot if it remains the sum of its parts. It is a robot when it does something it is not supposed to do - when we see it as inhabiting itself. (It - who?, we ask, excitedly). They are our hope for the unexpected: if we can control everything, and the result is somethig more than what we were making, then there is no everything.
And we can dream on.

The Auction of Athena: Our Pop Sculpture Cover Girl Goes on the Block

In the year-plus since "Pop Sculpture" has come out, we have been deluged with words of thanks from folks who find the book to be an indispensable guide to the art of sculpture. And we have nothing but thanks for all of you who have been so supportive of the book -- we hope it will serve you well in the years to come. But now that a year has passed, we're moving on to new projects, and we've got to make room in the studio.

Our cover girl, Athena, is almost two feet tall with her spear, and it's time she moved out on her own, so we're putting her up for auction in Tim's eBay store, at TimBrucknerShop.com. She's a one-of-a-kind piece -- a complete set of molds does NOT exist, so this is the only way to get her. Ever. Look for the auction to post sometime on Sunday, November 27, and expect it to run for ten days; a portion of the proceeds will go to the Arnell Memorial Humane Society of Wisconsin. Keep track of it over at our Facebook page, and enjoy some more photos of Athena below!

The House

This house which is almost gone. Which still has the lines and weight of a house, yet could very well be called landscape. This house which is a set of floors engraved with memories that no one you know could ever read. Things, as people, come and go, yet we believe them to be different, we invest what is left of our faith in this space or that. It's what you think as you move the objects around, pretty damn self-conscious, pretty certain that this armchair in this place is pure iconoclasm. 

You'd rather it were a farm. You would prefer it to be pragmatic, and you would strive for it to be pure function, eliminating any sentiment, oiling the squeaking doors so the sound doesn't leave traces, cleaning the floor so there are no signatures. No time travels. 

Then you picture this farm, and somehow it's not so proper, the weather is muddy, or maybe that's the way it always looks, there are traces everywhere, things have a rhythm they will never ever retain, things have a rhythm they will never ever give up. It is your wildest dream, and this land is full of you, it does not allow you to leave. You seem to have been here long before you've ever pictured this place.

You move back, trying not to stare, so as not to keep any of this. Then you see the roof, its perfectly symmetrical form (it is not symmetric, but that is how you see it), its blissful abstraction. The way this alien form remains here. Now, yes, you can leave. You exit the picture, you go back to the house where the armchair is elsewhere, you walk out through the garden, and you take your hard-earned sight to another nest.

Nicholas McLeod, The Farm (2010)