Bill Merikallio
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Caimitillo, Swiss pear, American cherry, and walrus baculum. 1991
7" by 5" by 24"
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The Sorcerer's Apprentice is a wall cabinet for an oosik made of caimitillo, a lesser known species from Peru that was ecologically harvested by the Yanesha Indians and imported by the Luthier's Mercantile. This was the first piece I built at school.
Some animals, such as raccoons and walruses, actually have a bone, or baculum, in their penises. The Eskimos call walruses' bacula oosiks and use them in their traditional fertility rites. My father-in-law had an oosik and asked me to build him a stand for displaying it.
The title of this piece came from the scene in Walt Disney's Fantasia in which Mickey Mouse cast a spell on his mop in order to speed up his chores. This image of Mickey Mouse dabbling in magic, only to have it backfire on him, seemed an apt metaphor for the AIDS crisis which followed in the wake of the sexual revolution; indeed it can also serve as a metaphor for technology and consumerism gone berserk. Likewise, the idea of building a conceptually based piece while studying with Jim also seemed to dovetail nicely with the whole motif of a rogue apprentice.
©1997
Photos by Kevin Shea
