“The Snake” – This is a tone chambered mahogany body with a maple top that is carved/sculpted into a coiled King cobra. The scales are hand cut mother of pearl and abalone scales. There are over 1500 scales inlaid into the guitar top and back of the neck and headstock. The maple fretboard is stained and burned to represent a snake’s belly. The eyes are LEDs under rubies. They are illuminated by a push/pull volume control. Signed by Slash… a snake aficionado.
JOYCE FRANCIS New York, NY
“Banana Land Flowers” box 2008
Cast and carved bright orange Lucite acrylic deeply incised and carved with three dimensional images of a monkey, a butterfly, a dragonfly and exotic flowers and foliage.
The top cover dimension is 1 3/4″ thick and the four sides of the box are 1 1/4″ thick.
Marks: Joyce Francis 08
H: 6″ x W: 4 3/4″ x D: 4 3/4″
Price: $3,750
Joyce Francis is a native Manhattanite artist who specializes in sculptured acrylic jewelry, purses, sculpture, tables and coveted collection of exciting, passionately carved decorative boxes. All pieces have been painstakingly hand carved, hand dyed, illuminated and sometimes hand painted as well. There are no embedded objects. Her purses are part of the permanent collections of the New York Metropolitan Costume Institute (New York), The Victoria and Albert Museum (London), The Fashion Institute of Technology (New York) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland).
Her work is in the collections of a number of stars and celebrities, including Hillary Swank, Phoebe Cates Kline, Emma Thompson, Cicely Tyson and Meryl Streep. Examples of her boxes and lamps are also owned by Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, Steve Martin and Tom Hanks.
TIM LIDDY
“Oy Vey” (1979) The game where you become a JEWISH MOTHER! Get your sons to become doctors—Get your daughters married to doctors! If not, OY VEY! 2008
Oil and enamel on copper, plywood back
Signed in script: Tim Liddy, red circular ring, “circa 1979”, 2008
Provenance: William Shearburn Gallery, St. Louis, MO
H: 10 ¼” x W: 20 ½” x D: 1 ¾”
With his recent paintings, Liddy has both reasserted the construct of hyperrealist painting and developed a thoroughly unique advancement of that mode by extending the cultural reality of the indexed original. Based on the illustrated box lids of vintage board games, Liddy has recontextualized a subject, which evokes the underlying rules of life. Painted on copper or steel in the precise dimensions of the original, the metal is then manipulated to demonstrate the exact rips and tears from years of usage and includes trompe-l’oeil renditions of the scotch tape that might be holding the cardboard box together, the assorted stains, or the various graffiti of time. Liddy leaves no possibility of ambivalence, these works speak to a concurrent understanding of their original object identity and to themselves as works of art engaged in historical and psychological dialogue.