The Drummer

A standing figure about thirty inches tall: a found branch, twisted, looping into a curve above its base like a creature crouched and about to strike. Two pale, tapered wooden sticks are held aloft on hardware springs; at the top, a dark wooden slab pierced by a round eye suggests a muzzle, though the animal refuses to be named. The neck is a run of springs, a workshop version of a spine. Ordinary hardware is assigned the duties of flesh, and the scene rests on that strain: half beast, half mechanism, the drummer is frozen a fraction of a second before the stroke.