14"w
x 14"h x 8"d
Wood, Metal, Stone, Electronics
“The
Testosterone Clock” is one woman’s view of male sexuality.
One evening in a flash of creative insight,
I saw the male sex drive as a ticking alarm clock, erection chasing flaccidity,
like the big hand chasing the little hand, over and over again until the
end of time.
To make the clock, I cut a section of a mesquite tree trunk and hollowed
it on the lathe. Conceptually, I liked the connection of this piece to
a tree, so I left the bark on and added a living stem as a reference
to the tree of life. Later the living stem became too labor-intensive
to maintain in a gallery setting, so I replaced it with a silk-leaved
substitute that made the same conceptual connection.
I carved toes for the two feet of the clock and turned bells out of bird’s-eye
maple. For the ringer (it’s non functioning) I created a small stone-age
club as an allusion to the continuity of the human race since ancient
times. To the penile-shaped clock hands, I added a zigzag second hand
with an eye at the end. The eye ties in with the feet and calls attention
to the link between vision and the sex drive.
The clock is battery-driven with a separate wind-up mechanism that provides
the ticking sound. Inside there is an electronic timer that beeps every
90 seconds, signaling the occurrence of a sexual thought in the average
testosterone-driven person. The motion of the clock hands, the ticking
and beeping of “The Testosterone Clock” were designed to be
constant and persistent, just like our biologically-programmed “prime
directive” to reproduce ourselves.
Like many of my other pieces, “The Testosterone Clock” has
a definite sense of humor to it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
As shown in the Harry Wood Gallery as an entry in the Nathan Cummings Travel Award Competition, March 2003.
Alarm Bells
