"Snake Hiking Stick"
Pine branch, acrylic paint, leather, stickers, rope, feathers, and "chuzo".
Ehrwald, Austria 2003, France 2003-2006
While hiking in Ehrwald, Austria, I found a dead pine branch that I picked up and brought back to France. I sculpted a snake head on top and tried painting a trompe-l'oeil body coiled around it. I kept a piece of each radial stem at the bottom to act as a snow/mud anchor. In december 2004 I found myself in a saddle shop in San Jose's central market in Costa Rica looking for a chuzo to put at the end. I ended up explaining apparently to R�nald Lanzoni, one of Costa Rica's greatest marathon runners (after Villa Col�n's Miguel Angel Perez off-course), what a chuzo was..."the chuzo is attached to the end of a long stick and is used by bueyeros (Costa Rican ox-cart drivers) to control the oxen. My father, a bueyero himself, taught us how to use it...if you want the cart to go left, you prick the right ox (it make him go faster), if you want it to go right, you prick the left one, simple". I put it on the stick in case I run into a bear one day...when I do, I'll prick myself on the right and then on the left and hopefully I'll run, run, run like Lanzoni....
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