The Dreads
I have always been intrigued with mops: their voluminous shapes and textures. I had initially used a couple mops on the heads of some home-made scarecrows in my vegetable garden and then I decided to use one of them as dread locks for a sculpture of Edgar Allen Poe that I created for a show celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth. I called the piece ‘The Dreads.’ Later I found another mop a couple more pieces.
A few months later after having found several more mops I was coincidentally invited to submit some work for a show called 'Shakespeare Interpreted.' The Dreads seemed like perfect foils. Shakespeare's 'Richard III' is about a hunchbacked tyrant who brutally eliminated all of his rivals including his wife and son as he rose and consolidated his power. I decided to portray his victims as 'mop-heads on pikes'.
On the wall behind the heads is one of my paintings titled, "Alas Dear Yorick, I Hardly Knew Ye" in which Hamlet contemplates his relationship with his long dead friend, Yorick, a court jester.