#large instrument

[rachaelmayo]

This is Jazzdragon 19, one of the largest and most complex in the series. I made this in 2011.

A DA friend sent me a video of a musician playing a contrabass flute - these instruments are amazing, and the player must have had the lungs of a dragon in order to move air through the thing. It was huge! Taller than she was! I wanted to take that up a notch with the Jazzdragon, and make playing the flute a whole-body exercise. So Jazz 19 is playing the sub-sub-contrabass flute with his toes.

The dragon was done in two layers - the main body and that large wing on the left side of the picture. He's colored with Prismacolor pencils and gold paint pen.

Behind the dragon is copper-colored repousse metal tooled with... Bach, I think. I can't remember what I referenced for the musical notation. The dark round things are acrylic "dragon tears" I nabbed from a convention, and the green/brown discs are dyed shell. The deep background is a mix of acrylic, ink, and glitter with tiny rhinestones attached.

[lovelydaysballetmusic]

The Earth Harp is the longest stringed instrument in the world, with strings that extend up to 1,000 feet in length. The Earth Harp’s first installation featured the resonating chamber mounted on one side of a valley with the strings stretched out nearly 1,000 ft to the other side. How does the Earth Harp work? The Earth Harp is played using violin resin on cotton gloves and musical bows. The performer’s hands are run along the strings to created beautiful cello like tones. The act of rubbing the strings creates a longitudinal compression wave.