KERFUFFLE

Kerfuffle-Partial-11.jpg

A disturbance, fuss, or commotion, kerfuffle reminded me of shuffling cards and brought to mind the scene in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland where Alice is attacked by the Queen of Hearts’ playing-card minions. I selected John Tenniel’s illustrations of Alice and the Queen, but preferred Disney’s Cheshire Cat. All the images were found on the Internet in black and white, needing to be reworked and colorized in Photoshop, printed, and mounted on sheet metal. I utilized the clockwork box of a defunct English school clock as my stage. It had a pendulum door on the bottom and a rewinding door on the right side. These openings allowed me to have the Queen and her cards attack Alice from multiple directions, and the pendulum door double for the rabbit-hole through which she falls. Figuring out how to softly bend the resilient steel wires I used to support the cards, and attach them to the box from multiple directions was challenging, as was attaching the cards to the wires in a way that gave the illusion of them flowing.