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Alice . . . All flowers can talk! It's just that your flowers are all asleep; their beds are way too soft. a raised copper vessel - 12"dia. 3.5" deep Once upon a time there was a craftsman bowl in a display case at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. - - - and actually, it's still there (but I digress . . .) Years ago, I used to work for the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, in the Childrens Theater division with our theater and offices inside the Institute of Arts. It was wonderful, when we did period pieces I could go up in off hours and get close to things in the period rooms. No touching, but getting close, and seeing from all angles can help a lot when you art trying to understand a style, and how it was produced. One of the things that fascinated me was this copper bowl. And How, you may ask, does that relate to a sleeping flower? The flower came from the bowl, and Alice. . . remember Alice, not the one with the restaurant. The one with the looking glass and the rabbit hole. I visited her twice, once in a play, and once in the production of an animated display. I considered Carroll, Tenniel's illustrations, Rackums illustrations, all sorts of other illustrations, I even got to go into the archives at the U and handle Dali's illustrations... It was great fun, but it was long ago. It started when I noticed that the entire piece could be generated by just folding a flat sheet, like a piece of orgami. I laid out the rise and angle of all the folds and found we were back to a flat sheet, so I took my best guess and traced a pattern on copper and started putting in the bends, without annealling so that I was less likely to accidentally shrink or stretch the material. I got it close enough to see that my thesis was correct. The stiff material didn't want to bend all the way, but it got close enough, and in forming the part I learned enough about how my "best guess" pattern folded to perfect it if I wished to try again with softer material. Then the "Foot in the Door" invite came and I thought hey, maybe I could just fold this up so it fits in a 1 ft cube. I annealled the piece and bent all the folds in a lot further till they started to get stiff again. It was still just over a foot across but I hauled in in to take progress photos.