Quirk, a Portrait of the Artist as a Space Alien Duck

He is my Mascot. He is me. He originally wasn’t me. He was a she. A Myrna Bird to be exact.

I had a couple of students that Alfred asked me to take on, some of his middle aged ladies that were just hacks. As a joke on one of their attempts to carve parrots and pussycats out of the rhyolite, I carved this cyclopean bird out of a leftover piece of stone. She had a little bit of a hunch as well, and insisted on wearing these padded shoulders that made it worse. That’s why the head is coming out of the bolder. After I had shown it to Alfred, I asked him if it would be OK to name it after our mutual student.

He didn’t think it was a good idea, and I decided that since all works are autobiographical she could become a he named Quirk, a play on my name and the Q sound associated with ducks. Quack.