Observatory (2011)

The inside cover is covered with fabric featuring a large colorful, amorphous floral design. Attached to the inside cover is an open-top box covered with an etching illustration of a bat with its tongue extended. Contained in this box are a set of four cards. The cards have cue words on one side and collaged etchings illustrating some of The Arabian Nights stories on the reverse sides. Directly above this box is a black-and-white photograph of two 1930s men standing in a field. The assemblage frame is covered with text about bats. The framed area is divided into two nearly equal sections by two background images. The bottom image is group portrait photograph of a cricket team and the image above is a color illustration depicting deep undersea life. Running the full height of the inside frame, the right and left inside panels are covered with caricature drawings by Leonardo da Vinci. Images cropped from Leonardo’s paintings cover the top and bottom of the inside of the frame. In the center of the assemblage are two shelves of blue tinted glass. The bottom shelf holds a yellow bead with a piece of artificial foliage sprouting out of it. To the right of this are clippings of words beginning with the letter ‘o’ pasted atop upholstery tack heads. On the other glass shelf is a paper cylinder of text capped with an acorn top. This acorn top is attached to a thin piece of dark rope which leads over to the right into the torso of a red plastic toy cowboy figure. Other pieces of this same bit of rope are used to dangle three toy plastic legs pinned to the lower right and left panels. A clipping of the word “Observatory,” is pasted on the top outside of the frame. The signature and date are on the bottom outside of the frame.