Skully, a.k.a. Death laughs at us all.

a fine art skullpture

This Skullpture is an homage to the helmet – both the helmet used in this artwork, as well as helmets in general – not to mention motorcycles, adventure, life, art, my personal history, and more. It’s a celebration, lament and a personal time-capsule all in one fantastically entertaining art installation.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

In early 1982 at the age of 25, I was living in the Westport area of Kansas City (I grew up in Overland Park), and I had just acquired a brand new Kawasaki GPz 550 (a now legendary predecessor to the modern sportbike). Unfortunately, a few months later I had a rather bad accident. While riding in the rain, I went down while in a turn, and slid under the back of a car – breaking 14 ribs, and puncturing my right lung in three places. I spent a week in the hospital and another two weeks recuperating at home.

This skullpture is focused on, and uses, the helmet I was wearing in that accident. On the back of the helmet is a dent where it struck the underside of the car (the differential, I believe). Obviously, the helmet saved my life, and I’ve carried it with me ever since (41 years as of the creation of this artwork).

After recovering from the accident, I repaired the motorcycle, and rode it to Los Angeles the following Labor Day weekend – a trip of 2,250 miles over four-plus days (explanatory maps are on the included memory stick). I left Kansas City in the evening, planning on getting across Kansas and into Colorado by sunrise. From there, my plan was to continue accross Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California, where I would go to Monterey, then take Highway 1 south to L.A.

That was the plan – but things didn’t go exactly as planned. It was one of the greatest adventures of my life, and I was very lucky to have survived it. (Note; the bottom-left photo shows the bike somewhere in Nevada, the other is in the driveway of where I first lived after getting to L.A. (Lennox, CA).

Lastly, as you can see, the skullpture also contains numerous personal relics that are as symbolically-important to this skullpture as they were to me personally over the years. Some of these items are hidden between the two layers of the plastic base, including; a memory stick with an itemized list of contents and what they symbolize, a digital copy of my portfolio, a detailed résumé, and more.