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Michael Criley

Daddy Long Eggs
Mixed Media
32" x 32" x 14"
$1,000
Octaplegic Cave Crab
Mixed Media
9" x 9" x 12"
$650
Signal Buzzard Gibbet
Mixed Media
6" x 10" x 18"
$1,000
Acetylene Snollygoster with a Faraday Cap
Mixed Media
32" x 22" x 8"
$850
Michael Criley

I grew up listening to my grandmother’s long-ago stories of the coal fields, of mountain pixies as real as fireflies, John Henry, haunted tipples and Davis Grubb. Tales of month-long lightning storms, the Umbilicus Man and a vein of white coal, bright as the moon, and closest to home, the cross-eyed girl who summoned the Contraptions.

Today we’d call them robots, but born back then of umbrellas, celluloid dolls and film, whiskey stills, typewriters, doctor’s instruments, carbide lamps and whatnot, they were known as Contraptions, that scuttled from the caves, flew from the cellars and sawmills, to rattle and buzz on the roofs when the neighbor girl hollered.

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