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Dance of the Butterflies
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Mark Debe

Dance of the Butterflies

Dance of the Butterflies –A Wood-Turned Musical Sculpture
This whimsical musical sculpture integrates 5 major and 19 secondary elements, all made by wood-turning. The large cylindrical base was turned from a slab of black walnut from a tree that blew down locally in 2013. What I call the mandolinos (little pseudo mandolins) were turned from a single log of spalted birch, from a neighbor’s tree. The central vase, that fills the negative space defined by the mandolinos, was turned from a half-log of spalted maple from my wood-turning club (MWA). The music spiral coming out the top of the vase I turned from a log of box elder that I gathered from a fallen tree near to where I live. The walnut insets, bridge boxes and string guides (‘guitar nuts’) were made from the same walnut tree that the base came from. The only non-local woods used are the music box finial knobs and string-tensioning tapered plugs, which were made from African Blackwood.
The sculpture has three ways to make music: two kinds of music box mechanisms (four wind-up spring types and two hurdy-gurdy-crank types); and the two mandolinos., which use authentic mandolin strings. The entire sculpture acts as a sounding board for the three mechanisms.
Materials: Spalted birch, spalted maple, black walnut, box elder, African blackwood
Finish: Sanding to CAMI 2000, CA stabilization, MinWax Polyurethanes
Dimensions: 12” diameter x 20” tall
Click to expand...
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Reactions: Chuck Lobaito, Bob Franklin, William Rogers and 3 others
john lucas
Very interesting and well done. If I have any critic at all it's that the vase just seems out of place in the over all picture of things. Not out of place in the design which is excellent. I do like that the music comes out of it. What a great piece.
 
Bill Boehme
Beautiful work. This reminds me a bit of a Jerry Bennett sculpture.

I searched the ANSI index and the closest that I could come to your reference to ANSI 2000 was a medical ocular safety standard for laser exposure.
 
Art Betke
I'm impressed with the various pieces, but the collage seems to be too busy. It also seems to need interpretation rather than speak for itself.
 
Mark Debe
@john lucas Thanks, John. Your perspective on the vase is interesting. For me it was critical for two reasons. From a design standpoint, it was intended to "fill the negative space" between the two mandolinos. From a functional standpoint, it is what holds everything together at the top (wood screws under the lip of the vase.) And then, yes, it is the source of the "music spiral" being pulled up by the butterflies. The inside of the vase conforms to the spiral which sits under its own weight, but is easily lifted out.
 
Mark Debe
@Martin Groneng Thank you, Martin. There is an illusion too that I like to point out, especially to children. (I made this for competition in our Minnesota Woodworkers Guild's 2018 Northern Woods Exhibition this past April, and specifically displayed it so that it could be touched and handled and played by viewers.) The black finials are the knobs for winding up the four music boxes. But since the Africa black-wood finials are perfectly symmetric and featureless, you can't visually detect that they are rotating as the music box winds down. The little butterflies on their tops, however, do revolve around the finials, giving the illusion that they only dance when the music plays. My four grandkids and I have fun making the sounds of an orchestra tuning up - we play all six music boxes and the two sets of mandolin strings all at the same time.
 
Mark Debe
@Art Betke Thank you, Art. I guess that tightness of the elements is something that appeals to me. It certainly was a challenge to get the components sufficiently precise in their dimensions to make it all fit robustly. But perhaps if you saw it in 3D instead of a 2D image, it may not seem quite so busy. As far as speaking for itself, as I indicated to Martin Groneng, it was made to be touched and played, and therefore surprise the viewer, by what they discovered. That was actually the most fun about the Northern Woods Exhibition held for several days in a large Mall -watching people come by and interact with it, and observing their surprises and smiles when they turn a crank, strum the strings or wind-up a music box and see the butterflies dance.
 
Mark Debe
@Bill Boehme Thank you, Bill, for your nice comment. And thank you for pointing out my incorrect reference to the finest sand-paper grit I used. I meant to say CAMI (the USA system as opposed to the European FEPA.) I am so accustomed to thinking ANSI, I typed it incorrectly. I am not familiar with Jerry Bennett. Can you point me to a website or some such thing?
 

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Mark Debe
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Canon Canon EOS 5DS
Aperture
ƒ/18
Focal length
70.0 mm
Exposure time
1/160 second(s)
ISO
100
Flash
Off, did not fire
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Dance of the Butterflys-2MB.jpg
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Date taken
Sat, 28 April 2018 4:38 PM
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1400px x 1885px

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