DOVE BRADSHAW

(USA)

The earliest two--the gold goose eggshell and the birds mating on a Zen Archer`s target are from my 1969 installation titled Plain Air. Live birds were given free reign of the studio. A target was placed on the floor below a bicycle wheel hung as a perch. Zen Archer`s find a bullseye irrelevant. Canvas nests were added when the piece was recreated--at Sandra Gering Gallery, New York, 1989, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, 1990 and PS 1 Contemporary Art in New York, 1991. The egg that was hatched in the original installation prompted the casting of the two halves of an eggshell in bronze. In the 80s silver and gold casts were made, each time breaking a new egg. The work`s title Series, Nothing nods to Zen`s `success is dust.` In 2000 the first goose egg shell cast in gold ecchoes the ancient tale about the goose laying the golden egg,

2 √ 0 [waterclock and level], is a 1971 sculpture originally designed as an invention to function vertically as a clock, horizontally as a level. Left uncalibrated it failed as a scientific instrument, but in time became a work resisting the assumption that space and time are measurable. The title is a nonsense mathematical formula also drawing attention to the futility of definitions.

You Skull See is a self-portrait in a mirror. The title is from Finnegans Wake.

For Herself in the Element, the body elements are tattoed on a woman`s back in descending proportion by weight. Oxygen, represented by the letter "O"on the periodic table, circles her neck. The title is also from Finnegans Wake.