Founded in 1989 by Diana and David Hildebrand Wilson, the
Museum of Jurassic Technology houses an array of artistic and scientific exhibits which evokes the cabinets of curiosities that were the 18th century predecessors of modern natural history museums.
What appears from the outside to be a tiny, defunct store front is in actuallity a rather large labryinth-like myriad of exhibits.
From microscopic collages made entirely from individual butterfly wing scales and stereographic X-ray photographs of flowers, to a collection of decomposing antique dice once owned by magician Ricky Jay, a small room dedicated to unusual letters and theories received by the Mount Wilson Observatory, and my personal favorite the collection of micro-miniature sculptures and paintings done by Hagop Sandaldjian (1931-1990).
Born in Egypt and later settling with his wife and children in Armenia, Hagop was a highly regarded violin soloist with the Yerevan National Orchestra. He was also a conductor and taught at two music colleges as well as at the state conservetory. It wasn't untill the late 1970's that Hagop began to explore the art of microminiature sculpture.
Through these tiny tedious sculputures, Hagop found an art form parallel to music in its extremes of commitment, passion, and extravagance channeled into controlled, precise movement.
Born of obsessive devotion, an idividual sculpture could take as many as fourteen months to finish. Each sculpted micron represented not only endless hours of toil, but agony laden peril, as his work could be easily destroyed or lost. An unexpected sneeze of misdirected breath could blow away months of work. In view of the fact that even his pulse could cause an accident, Hagop trained himself to apply his decisive strokes only between heartbeats.
Hagop and his family immigrated to the United States in 1980 and for the next decade untill the time of his death, he produced a collection of 33 miniatures. Inhabiting the margins between dream and reality, these figures of impossible dimensions appear at once banal and elusive, meticulously crafted and dreamily insubstantial. Straddling the line between science, craft, art and novelty, his work befuddles our ability to make such distinctions, and in so doing, opens a space for wonder.
{photos: saschapohflepp & MJT}{various text: MJT}
photos via Tim Palen
