"Quaestus" is the latest assemblage from sculptor Jud Turner. He sez,

“Quaestus” is a latin word meaning “gain or profit extracted from work”, a concept darkly represented in my latest sculpture: 5 tiny employees are trapped in an endless task inside a gigantic machine, toiling to keep up with the conveyor belts they are walking on. Each work station has a 2 digit counter which seems to be keeping some kind of score. If the employees don't keep up with the machine, they will fall off the ends of their conveyor belts and be fed to the machine.. The employees actually power this machine, but are unaware and unable to stop moving forward for fear of falling behind.

It's an amazing piece. Click through for hi-rez and details.

"Quaestus"

Sculptor Jeremy Mayer writes, "This is my latest project- a portrait commission. The client, Mark Pelzner, came to me with 3 typewriters bequeathed to him by his late father, Marvyn Pelzner. Mark wanted me to take those typewriters and make a likeness of his dad that would be mounted on a box which holds Marvyn's ashes. There are some parts in the sculpture that came from other typewriters in my stash, but most of the parts are from Marvyn's typewriters. The eyes, for example, are made from his Smith Corona desktop, the shoulders from his Underwood portable, and parts of the head were from his desktop Underwood No. 5.

"Marvyn was an Optometrist in the San Francisco Bay Area who was a big San Francisco Giants fan and a doting grandfather. Many thanks to the Pelzner family for coming to me to work on such a powerful and personal project. I feel very fortunate to have been entrusted to do this. As usual, I made this using only typewriter parts- no solder, no glue, no welding, no armature."

Portrait of Marvyn A. Pelzner (Thanks, Jeremy!)

On Wired, Matt Simon profiles Clayton Bailey, who makes spectacular rayguns out of junk and scrap, and who is possessed of a truly magnificent mustache.

Next you’ll notice the many steampunkish ray guns — from dueling pistols to rifles to turrets — that Bailey has constructed from materials he found at flea markets and scrap yards around the San Francisco Bay Area. Instead of shooting lasers, they utilize either lungpower or pump-action air pressure to launch peas, corks or bits of potato a third of the way down a football field.

They’re gorgeous and entirely nonlethal, unless you’re targeting someone with an especially bad allergy to peas, corks or potatoes.

Scrap Yards Yield Raw Material for Artist’s Amazing Ray Guns

(Image: Ariel Zambelich/Wired.com)

Tom Deininger is an assemblage artist who arranges bewilderingly large collections of odd plastic tchotchkes into gorgeous pieces, including this Monet-like masterpiece.

(via Craft)

Bird Houses (Thanks, Brian!)

Michael Johansson (via Core 77)