I came across an old wooden box covered in crumbling leather at a flea market.  It was filled with colorized and black and white glass lantern slides to be viewed on an apparatus that was a precursor to a slide machine.  The apparatus had a candle or light bulb in the middle around which a revolving metal framework held a series of slides.  The slides came in sets and illustrated books, stories, poems.  A mechanism to view entertainment before the advent of electricity, movies, television, video.  The sets within the box were incomplete, so I had fragments of the stories they illustrated.  I used them to create my own stories, my own icons to make them precious beyond their intended use.

162 Moses di Michelangelo
2015
Ceramic, glass plate photographic negative
$1,250.00
17" diameter x 1" d

Multi fired stoneware with fused glass and glass plate photographic negative circa late 19th C.


This "icon" is adorned with texture as to evoke aquatic encrustation by imaginary creatures that could be found in an Ernst Haeckel drawing. The focal point is a glass plate negative (ambrotype) crica late 19th C found among others in a mouldering box in a flea market. The title of this work refers to text found on the slide.

(St. Patrick?), Mason Optician, 5 Dame St, Dublin, 34/40
2015
Ceramic, glass
$1,250.00
12" w x 16" h x 1" d

Multi fired stoneware with fused glass and colorized glass slide, circa late 19th C.


This "icon" is adorned with texture as to evoke aquatic encrustation by imaginary creatures that could be found in an Ernst Haeckel drawing. The focal point is a colorized glass slide found among others in a mouldering box in a flea market. The imagery in such slides date to slide sets popular during the turn of the 19th Century commonly produced to relate to a published story, lecture, poem or song.* The title of this work refers to text found on the slide and what I can only imagine it depicts. In my mind this slide is a fragment of a story about Saint Patrick.


*Taken from Lucerna- the Magic Lantern Web Resource: http://www.slides.uni-trier/set/set-search.php