Thank you Frank,

Thank you for your thoughts and insight. Some of my thoughts when I created this piece were sort of jumbled around the notion of a past event that a few members in my family encountered all at the same time (a death in the family). It all affected us in different ways, yet most of us have different recollections of the event. Thinking that maybe something had slipped by me- I took a closer look, and came up with something interesting. While studying the past and the event I began playing with magnification. Pouring over old grainy fading pictures and trying to make out what I was looking at with a small loupe; scanning pictures into my computer, etc. I noticed that the magnifier distorts. Obviously it distorts, but keeps everything true within it's field of focus. But slightly tilted it starts to distort. At the edges of crisp clean perception there starts the questionable line/void of distorted uncertainess. It is sort of a bubble that draws your imagination in. Suddenly, I was spending more time looking at the odd distortions cast by the magnifier then what i was spending actually studying what I was trying to see. Memory is an odd device, and often it tricks us. We don't necessarily remember things the way they actually happened, but instead we remember events how we would have liked them to have turned out. We remember what we want to remember. Imagination filled the void just out of reach of clear perception, and in the same way imagination filled the void within my own past memories.
My pine cone/ pill bug represented this need to search. I felt that I was out in the woods looking under stones and all I could find was pine cones and pill bugs. My imagination started to act, and suddenly it took over. The pine cone and pill bug morphed together and the magnifiers spread out to keep on searching and distorting... and casting distorted views of imagination.

First off I'd like to welcome you to ArtMetal. I've read a couple of your posts and have to say that I am impressed with the amount of detail in which you talk about your art. That being said, I would like to add a couple of thoughts to your comment about ways in which we all experience similar events.

I'm a firm believer that each one of us has a unique experience of the reality we live in. Even though we can have group experiences of the same event, each person will have a unique experience of the event from their personal perspective. Not only is the location different for each individual, but their processing of the event can be unique to them. I'm amazed that we can even communicate using words! My interpretation of "red" is unique to my experience. So when I say this is "red" you may say that it's "pink."

One of the things that makes life so interesting is the fact that we each experience it in a different way. Pulling out the magnifying glass is not going to change the overall experience. It may let us look deeper and pay more attention to the details, but it doesn't bring us any closer to seeing what the other person is seeing. It's what makes life worth living and sharing.

Thank you for sharing your art and your thoughts!

Thanks Rick. I've got a few other pieces in the works and will post the pictures as soon as I 've got them finished.
Sincerely, David Barnhill

David,
Very nice little box. I like the depth of the pine cone things. Great patina.

Just for what it is worth you might want to look at starting your post as a blog and then enter all of the imagines to the one piece in the blog. I was not sure of what imagine to post a reply.

warren
http://www.metalrecipes.com

Thank you for the advice Warren. This is all very new to me and any advice from anyone is welcome. I will attempt what you said right away- to make things easier.
Sincerely, David