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Change Machine, Cyclical Model 25x

26"W x 24"D x 36"H, 2002

About events with wide-ranging ripple effects, like the invention of the steam engine sparking the Industrial Revolution in England. The look: very Victorian, very Jules Verne (author of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and other "futuristic" books), with a richness of materials, including copper, lead, stone, oak, leather, and velvet.

Based on my year at an English boarding school in 1977. That was the Queen's Silver Jubilee (25th year of her reign). I built the piece in 2002, 25 years after the experience, hence the cyclical theme.

Top element of a rocking beam suggests wave machines (cyclical pattern) in a science museum; Da Vinci-like "Modular Man" is tumbled about but always lands on his feet; also Sisyphus, Greek myth character, trying to push a rock up hill, but it slips back every time; and the Rocking Beam Engine, an early steam engine invented by James Watt in the 1700's.

Central oak door opens into a triptych, a three-part painting often done on oak panels, common in the Middle Ages; school crest is inverted, and drops down like a medieval castle's drawbridge. Within, a diamond checker tile pattern echoes the paving design under the steam engine.