---

What Remains
#35  2010
 

This is an old 12-inch English banjo with a rosewood neck,  which I transformed to my own idea (with no regret as the string length was too long, the bridge position much too low and the neck setting inappropriate.) but still keeping true to what it has been in the past with its marks and  imperfections. 

On this banjo the idea was to recall my mother Alzheimer's disease from which she died one year ago. All the inlays are made from pearl remaining from some of my preceding banjos of the past 15 years. You still can see or imagine the missing patterns.
The head looks normal at first sight, but when you look closer and more carefully, you can feel something "wrong" in it, in disorder, with no apparent logic. On the neck I chose pieces of pearl which were interesting in themselves but at the same time (at least for me...) could still recall a missing pattern no longer there. The scooped end shows a vanishing mosaic made from very tiny remaining bits. On the heel not much is left, only thin bits which no longer recall any pattern, almost nothing. On the back of the head, a last sparkle flies away. And finally on the dowel stick a single inlay (made out of the same piece as that on back head) suggests my father who remains alone now...