Somethings you never forget. I was in the Fine Arts program at USF, and worked in the theatre scene shop, under the direction of Mike Fish at the time this sculpture was built on the campus. One of many wonderful memories at USF. I do remember doing a lot of riveting for those “bulbs”.
Graphicstudio – Institute for Research in Art
31 January 2023
Alice Aycock
How to Catch and Manufacture Ghosts (B), 1981
Etching with watercolor additions
28-1/2 x 38-3/4 inches
Edition: 30; XXX
Alice Aycock’s artistic vision embraces sculpture, architecture, industrial processes and inventions, philosophy, history, and archaeology, among other disciplines. Aycock has explained that “For this piece I was inspired by devices and apparatus that I found in various history books on technology. The devices were archaic 18th-century and 19th-century objects that are no longer relevant…The piece is in large part my interpretation of the history of invention…”
Alice Aycock was the artist-in-residence at the USF Art Department in 1980 when the site-specific sculpture “How to Catch and Manufacture Ghosts: Collected Ghost Stories from the Workhouse” was created at the College of the Arts with the assistance of faculty and students. The large-scale, outdoor, partly motorized sculpture, constructed of metal, glass, steel, and wood, was dismantled in the early 1990s. However, two prints made contemporarily at Graphicstudio document the work and its process in isometric diagrams and explanatory texts and quotes.
Aycock was in residence at the University of South Florida in 1980 where she constructed a temporary outdoor sculpture, Collected Ghost Stories from the Workhouse, outside the USF Art Department’s sculpture shop. During that time, she also worked at Graphicstudio and produced two color intaglios. https://www.ira.usf.edu/PA/Pages/pa_aycock.html
Collected Ghost Stories from the Workhouse, 1980
From the Series Entitled How to Catch and Manufacture Ghosts
Cable, copper, galvanized steel, glass piping, steel, wire and wood
30’ x 75’ x 120’ (variable)
Sited at University of Florida, Tampa, FL
Photo: Alice Aycock