The Red Fly Flyer

Click on any image to see enlarged versions.

I am sure most of my readers have never bothered to wonder what would have happened had insects been cross bred with First World War airplanes.

You haven't??!! Well, don't worry, I have already done so and here is the result.

These are definitely guy kinda sculptures. Most little boys built model airplanes.

When I was a kid, I built dozens of them, hanging them with stout piano wire from the ceiling of my bedroom forming a gigantic aerial dogfight. I would borrow my dad's Zippo cigarette lighter (everybody's dad seemed to smoke in those days) and burn part of the model, glue orange and yellow cotton on the model and hang it at a steep angle. I had virtually memorized Quentin Reynolds' history of WWI fighter combat, THEY FOUGHT FOR THE SKIES. I saved up the enormous sum (for 1963) of $25 and ordered a thick British book with photos and specifications of every (and I do mean every) experimental and standard German airplane built from 1914 through 1918. Many of them look, to the modern eye, more contraption than machine.

One of the early spurs to my becoming a sculptor was I quickly tired of building only the limited types of model airplanes commercially produced and tried to add some more of my own.

Fast forward 45 to 48 years and I'm still a 12 year old, but now I'm trapped in a middle aged guy's body. The upside to that from a 12 year old's point of view is I can eat candy bars whenever I want, and I have a metal shop to make any airplane model I want. AND, I can make them any size and hang them nearly anywhere (Joy would probably even let me hang one or two in the bedroom, but I would have to do a lot of extra yard work.)

It is safer to place them on steel poles or hang them from thick branches in the garden. Besides, that gives me full range to create whatever tableau I want.

In the mid 1990s, when I had a large studio downtown and sold to about 100 galleries across the country, I did a series of fantastical flying machines, but the design was constrained by the need to produce pieces at a reasonable wholesale price AND that could be small enough to take apart and ship in a cardboard box.

Now that I am arguably richer--or I just don't care any more about being broke--I am making a new series of "WHAT IF BUGS HAD BEEN CROSSBRED WITH WORLD WAR ONE AIRPLANES???!!!" They will all be different and all as simple or fantastically complicated and improbable as I want to make them.

They are, of course, flown by "army ants."

A great present for the grown up 12 year old boy in your life -- or even a modern day pilot.

Each "plane" is unique. First, a special caterpillar is bred and allowed to cocoon and develop; when hatched, it is fitted out with wheels and a radial 8 cylinder organic engine and two Spandau synchronized machine guns made of old spark plugs. Note there are no rudders or flaps, since the bug flyer can twist its thorax and body to guide itself.
The wingspan is 45 inches ( 112 cm) and the length is 38 inches (about 100 cm)

This flyer is $725.

My "Army Ant" pilot is made of plumber's epoxy putty with welding wire antennae. I am pleased she/he/it came out so well in a sort of 1930s "Amazing Stories" front cover style.

Below, through the magic of PhotoShop, I caught this photo of the Bug Flyer skimming over the pond in our back garden.

Diving out of the sun!!!!!!

BLAM!!!! BLAM!!!! BLAM!!!! BLAM!!!!

If you want to see even more photos of the Red Fly Flyer in even larger size, check out my Flickr set at http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelhaas/sets/72157608495129785/