Art Liestman - Surface Enhanced Woodturning

Dancing Men

The pieces in this series include figures of "dancing men". These figures are, in fact, English phrases encoded using the code devised by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Dancing Men." These figures are a simple substitution code with each figure representing a letter of the alphabet. Each of the pieces is titled to reflect the contents of the message encoded on the object. In some cases, the title is the same as the message, but in others the title just gives a hint to the message. The figures are either pierced through the walls of the object or may be burned or carved into the surface.

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