CICADA

-PIANO WIRE, INK ON PAPER, HAND-MADE SPRINGS, BEARING BRONZE, STEEL, MOTOR. 3 ft X 2 ft X 2.1 ft. 2008


Fontanive’s sculpture machines return all our senses to the viewing experience: the sound of gears and motors and machinery as they busy themselves with their perpetual labours – flipping pages, spinning discs, hoisting cords, keeping the fish swimming upstream. We hear the heavy paper as it falls in gentle rotation; the happy hum of gently agitated pulleys; or the speedy turning of metal in Cicada, whose title alludes to the summery sound of tree insects, mimicked here by the machine’s white noise. -Gilda Williams