Sculptor Creates Ghost in the Machine with Birds and Butterflies

Artist Juann Fontanive created flip book that uses pictures of birds and butterflies taken from Audubon books and guides. The flip book machines are assembled by hand and can be described as part film and part sculpture. Different birds can be represented in a flip book and the rapidity in which each picture change gives the illusion of shape shifting aliveness. Gild Williams remarked, “Fontanive’s artworks seem strangely possessed, producing curiously moving animals that are neither living nor dead, or creating ghostly systems which seem to float mid-air and follow a pace and logic of their own.”