All Four Hooves, digital sketch and maquette

These preparatory sketches were produced in Photoshop near the end of 2005. I had been envisioning a revisit to the first bike-powered animation viewer, on a larger scale. Instead of frames of Super8 film, I was inspired by the idea of exhibiting oil paintings of a looped animation sequence that were large enough to be appreciated as individual works, seperate from the mechanical apparatus they were mounted to. At this point, the project was entitled: "It Takes Two to Make a Thing Go Right". I liked the idea of having two participants work together to make the machine function, and tried to design it as such.

With the assistance of my sculptor friend Ray Kruger, we made a miniature maquette out of steel, brass, and plastic/rubber parts from model kits. The bicycle pedals are wooden, held in place with brass nails.

I was accepted into the MFA Sculpture program at Concordia University in Montreal in the fall of 2006, and began working on it and various other drawing and sculpture projects.

This ambitious project was given a significant boost when it was awarded a Vivacité Montréal grant from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

I soon discovered that this physical scale was totally unrealistic, given my small studio space and lack of engineering experience, and began redesigning it on a more practical size.