The Pen (and Pencil) are Mightier Than the Sword
A knight can slay a dragon, but if the dragon wrote a tell-all and passed it around to his dragon friends prior to being beheaded, well then the dragon dies, but the story lives on.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Artists Alexander Weeks and Christopher David White have created sculptures that illustrate this point. And I want to take this opportunity to wish my Mom a happy birthday!
Weeks’ Assault Writer is modeled on an assault rifle and made of ball point pens. The sculpture is engineered to be ineffectual by design:
Through this piece I want to ask: how effective is violence in bringing about change in the world? I also constructed the rifle in such a way that it would be hard to hold and impossible to use effectively if it were real. The handle is made out of pens sticking out radially, the shoulder rest has pens that would stab you if held against the shoulder, the sight is purposefully closed up and there is no trigger present on the gun!
Love it, and I totally want one. As a writer and editor though, I gotta ask Weeks to spellcheck his description of Assault Writer on Behance. It’s typos galore!
OK, moving onto our next sculptor/scribe. Christopher David White uses the medium of ceramic to make work about life, death, growth, decay and change:
Permanence is the ultimate illusion. We attempt to subvert impermanence through technology and science. We isolate ourselves from the natural world, viewing it from the perspective of a spectator rather than a participant. Going about our daily lives, we rarely notice nor appreciate each unique experience our surroundings offer.
White finds peace in the small, simple things, like a pencil.
He writes:
By combining both human and natural elements within my work, I hope to highlight the fact that we are not separate from nature, but are in fact part of it, and in being so, we are as impermanent as a flash of lightning in the sky. Through the use of trompe l’oeil, we look closer; we rediscover the amazement, joy, and tranquility that come from our environment. At the same time, we witness our impermanence by evenhandedly dialing in on decay. Neither good nor bad, decay is simply a natural process of our world that at times can produce deeply moving and beautiful effects.
Nice.
