Alastair Mackie sometimes uses most unusual materials for his sculptures and installations. For example, the doll house above, titled "House," was constructed from 300 pulped wasp and hornet nests. And from Hi-Fructose, a description of the piece below, "Untitled (+/-)":
Alastair explained to me that he had spent a year collecting barn-owl pellets, after processing the pellets down to the mouse fur and bones within, Mackey used the loom to create fabric from the fur, the pile of bones correlating directly to the size of the sheet of the fur. Whether utilizing hornet nests, mouse skulls, toy airplanes, matchsticks or even plain old conventional bronze, Mackie tunes us in to the dialogue between his pieces and their composite material, a conversation that the viewer need not contribute to, only listen.
