Description
I’m an artist, and this is a very colourful, hand-made, faux “stained glass” artwork. It is a very special version of a favourite solid oak artwork of mine – entitled “Long-eared Owl (Art Puzzle) (You are What You Eat)” (see https://michaelautumn.wordpress.com/2023/05/03/long-eared-owl-art-puzzle-you-are-what-you-eat/). I use the phrase, “stained glass”, because that is what I completely intentionally intended it to look like – but it’s actually made of beautiful, crystal clear, 5mm thick, cast acrylic. It’s very smooth to the touch, is much safer (won’t cut you) and stronger than glass, and can be cut considerably more precisely. It has been hand-drawn by me, laser cut and engraved (by me) – to get the polished smooth edges, details and precision I wanted; and the pieces have been hand-painted by me using permanent transparent glass paints – to give the effect of beautiful transparent stained glass.
This is a unique art puzzle of a long-eared owl – or is it a bunch of small creatures that such an owl would eat – and make its own body with…? That is the paradox of this artwork… Be under no illusion, if you are brave enough to mix up all the 44 pieces, it’s quite a challenge to solve – and very rewarding when you complete it…
This transparent hand-painted acrylic art puzzle is presented in a beautiful custom designed (by me), hand-made (by me), openable, transparent “book” frame – which is hinged on the left side, and held closed by strong magnets on the right side. This frame is in effect a sandwich – consisting of three layers of 5mm crystal clear acrylic. The front and back panels are 5mm thick premium crystal clear cast acrylic. These are the two slices of “bread” that support the inner “stained glass” art puzzle “filling”. The frame measures 310mm high, 225mm wide, and 25mm deep. The art puzzle inside measures 290mm high, 190mm wide, and 5mm deep. It has hanging points on the top – to enable it to be hung in a window – and to let the ever-changing vagaries of natural light to shine through it – effectively creating an infinite variety of appearances.
A large part of the thinking behind the design of the frame was to provide considerable all round UV protection for the artwork inside – since it is intended to be permanently placed in a window – the greatest source of natural UV light an artwork is likely to be exposed to. Since the art puzzles pieces are painted on the front side of 5mm clear acrylic – and sandwiched between two 5mm pieces of crystal clear acrylic – there is effectively 10mm of solid 99.9%% UV protective clear acrylic behind it – offering considerable protection from rear-penetrating sunlight (and there is additionally 5mm of UV protection from the front). The special glass paint is itself extremely lightfast, but this frame design is to provide the absolute maximum UV protection in order to preserve your investment.
To try to actually do the puzzle, simply lay down and open the magnetic wooden frame. This exposes the puzzle, so you can slide out all the, scramble them, and then you can try and put it back together…
(While the pieces are smooth to the touch, it’s not suitable for unsupervised young children because some pieces are sharp by their very nature – like the tips of the tails of some of the small animals, and some small pieces could be swallowed.)
I’ve tried to be as eco-friendly as possible. The 5mm clear cast acrylic is recycled, the packaging is recycled and recyclable.
A better, longer, video of this artwork is on YouTube https://youtu.be/vUqEbPohVU8
This size of the owl itself is approximately life-sized, however, I can make this to custom sizes if required – for example to fit a specific window. Contact me if this is something you’d be interested in…
