As a member of Gallery 223, in Lake Geneva, we were supporting the arts by having some of the members art displayed at the Lake Geneva Theatre for a performance by the Lake Geneva Actors Guild, An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe, on October 19th.
I had played around with some of the elements in this assemblage for the last few months, not really knowing where I was going with it, I had the shelf mushroom, that looked like a pair of lungs, found an odd shaped piece of black walnut, that looked to me like a human heart, and some deer antlers that could be ribs. And I had just recently found a glass eye at a junk shop upnorth....
When this challenge came about, to create a piece to fit the performances, I knew these were what I wanted to use!
I made a blob of "blood to put under the assembled items, found an old box and some old wood floor boards that would become the floor that these items would be housed in.
I added a metal skeleton hand coming out of the drawer of the table this sat on, and a metronome below it, that would beat slowly, like the sound of a heart beating.... and tah dah! An assemblage was born... The Tell Tale Heart!These verses from the short story by Poe are part of what inspired me in creating this....
“It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.”
“...there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well. It was the beating of the old man's heart…”“If you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. I dismembered the corpse, then took up planks from the flooring of the chamber & deposited all between the scantlings.”
“...at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears. ...Yet the sound increased -- It was a low, dull, quick sound --much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath --and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly --more vehemently; the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, --but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder --louder --louder!”
