The Blue Wazoo
 |
The bead of consciousness suspends
continuity marking.
spaced stimuli.
Buddha nature wavers twitch.
The dream bag fills.
Possibility tendrils
and necessity rings
pop up.
Bead descends. |
The Blue Wazoo senses light and sound and responds with a behavioral
repetoire of various LED patterns, movements, inflations, deflations, whirs,
clicks and jiggles. It is six feet high and weighs about twentyfive pounds.
It was made in 1975-76 and uses TTL logic circuits.
It was featured on the cover of Creative Computing in February 1978. It is currently owned by the Allan
Stone Gallery in Manhattan.
A similar sculpture, the Black Wazoo, is in a major private collection on the west coast.
A couple in a
penthouse on Fifth Avenue had bought the "Blue Wazoo" in the late
1970s. In 1991, the woman's private secretary called me and said
the "blue thing is broken". I could buy it back for $1000
or it would be set out
on the curb Thursday to be picked up with the trash. I was not
surprised. I knew the situation. The gallery had sent me to
their apartment years earlier in to repair the piece. I
arrived to find the sculpture badly bent and broken. The
housekeeper said that two young boys in the family were out of control
and permitted to climb on the Blue Wazoo. I repaired it on
site and left it to its fate. As I left, I noticed pencils
scrawls on a
Gorky painting and something spilled on the de Koenig.
I told
the woman on the phone, I don't have the cash, but, yes, I will pay
$750 now and $250 when I get it. and I'll have someone pick it up as
soon as I can. Living in Detroit meant finding someone in New
York to recover it for me. She said that I better find someone
before Thursday. I did recover it. It had been seriously
trashed. I totally disassembled it, welded the broken parts,
repainted it and put it back together. When the dealer/collector Allan Stone saw it he
bought it and said he would not sell it. It
was in his private collection when he died in 2006.
I don't enjoy
restoring abused artworks, but I don't mind selling the same piece
twice.
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