She begins in two dimensions with drawings, and uses wood, wax and metals to carve and turn these objects of her mind-musings into the 3rd dimension, and perhaps a little more…

“Jewels” Vine is a skilled artificer working on a miniature scale, working mostly in Silver, bronze and gold with a mix of glass, ebony, titanium and stainless steel and sundry exotic accents; She has over three decades of experience in crafting these charm-sized talismans, many of which with moving parts and amazing detail.

Amphora Drop

ThingBot in Bronze

BABY TADFISH sterling silver on 60cm silver vermeil chain

Steely Eyed Silver Owl

Sterling Silver RoboKiwi

Baby Robokitty in Bronze

Bronze Micro Rocket Locket

Cyclops MegaBot in Bronze and glass

Bronze Skeleton keys

Baby Fish with Micro Keys

Jewels’ Etsy Shop can be found here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/jewelsvine

Share This

L’Oracle du Mort: One of many amazing clockwork pieces by Thomas Kuntz to be featured here in the Archive.

Thomas Kuntz, a professional artist for over 20 years, began as a sculptor of Commercial Toys, but later gained notoriety circa ’89-98 as a pioneer in the making of model kits based on old silent films like Nosferatu, The Man Who Laughs, Vampira, and others.

After a period of time Kuntz found that merely sculpting his dark creations was not nearly enough for him, and that he wanted to give life to his creations through mechanical, perhaps supernatural means… This change in method resulted in some of the darkest and most interesting automations known to man, and not nearly as many fatalities and disappearances as may be rumored.

You may have seen Thomas’ twisted creations in many places, though you may not have been aware of the crafter behind them, or the astounding degrees of meticulous craftsmanship responsible for their being. Mr. Kuntz’ creations have served in the armies and arsenals of many noteworthy people, interesting types such as Kevin Ogilvie, a.k.a. Nivek Ogre, frontman of theatrical post-punk industrial band “Skinny Puppy”. Thomas has made mechanical props for the band, and for Nivek alone, with pieces for use on stage, and for use in video.

In his workshop, Thomas Kuntz controls an army of clockmaking lathes from 1880-present, and each piece he creates is more said to be more exquisite than the last. There are only a handful of builders in the world who make automata, and no one does it like Mr. Kuntz.

“Death and Resurrection” (shown in the video below) is a self-portrait piece; One was sold, below are images of the artist’s copy.

The Alchemyst is a small but incredibly complex automaton who lives in a 9ft clock tower (pictures and video below). It is impossible to capture the whole moving tower inside the shop. There are many automatons living on and within this peice; on the top lives a procession of alchemists, a skeletal Templar knight rings a bell, libuse is a beautiful creepy princess who turns her head. The celestial clockwork and moon phases add even more life and motion to this large and complicated work of art. (continued below the following video)

This piece is the largest Thomas has ever done, and is one of several controlled not just by cams and levers, but an animation control system. All the movements are meticulously programmed in, and then put on to a “brain” computer that controls the servos, air, fire, and water effects.

Video of the Alchemist only

Video of the clock tower in action. The alchemist (clothed in this video) tells a story about a clockmaker.

“Fusion” (images below), another automation, controlled by clockwork, powered by hand cranking is a rather interesting piece in which two fused bodies dance around in dark and disturbing fashion (no video available yet).

The “Imp” is a stop motion character from a music video called Majik by Ogre. There are many more characters involved, but the Imp is the central piece. The entire video (below) was made by Thomas and director William Morrison.

The “Plague Hymn” is another beautifully creepy piece. Judging from the photos, it seems it would be an incredible piece to see in action. Hopefully there will be videos soon.

The “Levitating Head” Is said to be one of the freakier and creepier pieces to see in person. Thomas had a magician friend from London in the shop last week; For a few moments, he was astounded, and had a bit of pleasant difficulty figuring the illusion out.

Kundalini is another levitation piece, and was recently purchased by none other than Guillermo Del Toro, along with a new peice, “L’Oracle du Mort” of which there are videos of both (please see Thomas’ Vimeo page for video of “L’Oracle du Mort”, the link is listed at the end of this article).

Kundalini Video

Thomas Kuntz sells some of his smaller sculpted works on Etsy at anomalymachine.etsy.com, and you can visit his site (currently being renovated) at Artomic.com. He also has a video channel on Vimeo (including some Non-Work Safe automata videos censored on Youtube) as well as one on YouTube. Those are at (respectively) vimeo.com/user1180445/videos and youtube.com/haxanthrobo.

Share This

What you might not know about things is that Dunwich Horror has found new corners of archive no one knows about, even you, and those corners am currently empty of the sorts of interested things what decorate the archive where humans and others dwell.

My annex, as we in art worlds say about art places that are extra, has much need for things to make it more… “placey”, something to pretty up empty space.

I need better providers of stuff – here is why:

Ready? Okay!

Unknown decorators come throughout every day and try to decorate the Dunwich Horror Annex with things… many of which not too spiffy, such as bananna peels, empty milk cartons, styrofoam peanuts, and such.

Not to complain, they are not bad decorations – but apparently trucks like these things… A LOT!

Each weak, BIG truck finds annex, lifts annex up in sky, and eats all decorations what were donated. Sometimes Eats Dunwich Horror. Scares bejebus out of Dunwhich Horror each and every time… sometime Dunwich Horror has to walk home after being eaten.

Dunwich Horror wants make annex official with real stuff what trucks do not like. Dunwich Horror wants to sleep in on Tuesdays, and not get eated by BIG truck, and not have walk home.

More artifact and relic donations, crafty donations, and such – less dead cats and “sporks” – less mustache cream tin, less ”shaved snizzy magazine” (scary!). ART! That is what Dunwich needs to get annex up and running.

Send links to art donations and exhibits through handy contact form, tell Dunwich Horror about yourself and donations.

Thank you,

Dunwich Horror.

Share This

Having worked tirelessly throughout the day to ascertain their origin, I found about midway through spectographics and other means, that these items were by no means ancient, or even old. However, knowing that there exist modern-times dabblers and adepts in the metaphysical arts and aether-scientific spheres, I decided it would be a good idea to inspect these items more closely.

The first of these items – what seemed to be a pair of flight goggles, with a crudely fashioned set of secondary lenses bound by brass arms, which for some reason did not seem to bend or swing in ways that would be expected for functionality, or even bend at all. In trying to manipulate the lenses, I eventually broke one of these arms, and spent my first hours rather panicked that I may have irreparably damaged something of great importance.

Next I tried the simple approach of wearing the goggles. Whether a result of my error, or simply a matter of design, I found that though I do look quite smashing in them, the goggles do absolutely nothing, nothing at all.

The next items were a pair of what seemed to be hat pins, strange in their making due to the presence of gears and cogs at their tops, these gears not leading to other gears, I thought at first they might be some sort of key, perhaps to some sort of advanced alchemical device yet to be found. In trying to turn these gears, to ascertain how advanced the inner workings might be, I ended up breaking one of these gears from the pin, only to find it the gear was simply bound in place by a sort of jewelers’ glue.

Lastly, there was a top hat, not recently made but certainly by no means old. On it were a variety of things, including more of these rudimentary arms and lenses, some ribbons, and an insignia pin – showing promise in its obscurity. I spent the last hours of my day trying to decode this sigil, to no avail, and finally I surmised what only an educated man such as myself would… that perhaps it was a magical hat – the likes worn by those tricksters and charletans on the square, and by actual practitioners of the ancient arts as well. The only sensible place to go from here was to test this theory.

First, I tried the simple route, taking a nearby glass of goat’s milk, and pouring it into the hat to see if the milk disappeared, or perhaps turned into confetti. The end result was a desk covered in milk, a somewhat saturated hat, and a rather perturbed and milk-drenched dean as a result of my efforts to demonstrate the hat’s presumed powers of milk-to-confetti transmography.

The next test was to insert a pigeon into the hat, and see if it either vanished or turned into a string of joined handkerchiefs, or perhaps a balloon… I like balloons. In order to contain the pigeon, I placed a board over the opening, and set a heavy weight atop the board. This ended only in completely destroying the hat, and regrettably, its contents.

After a long hard day of work, including many many tests, leading to disassembly, and ultimately frustration in having wasted an entire day, I found that these items were all fakes of some sort, perhaps placed in my office by entities from competing universities or perhaps from BEYOND, towards the purpose of distracting me from something groundbreaking and important – such as my research or possibly even tea time.

The fiend, whoever they may be, did manage at both of these – I am however more determined than ever to succeed at whatever it is this miscreant or spectre sought to distract me from – beginning with tea and descending by order of importance.

If anyone has any knowledge regarding the perpetrators of this prank, hoax, or scheme, I would ask that they contact me in my study as soon as humanly or inhumanly possible.

Annoyededly,

Prof. Aden M. Kemy

Share This