A poem from a follower

Hi and thanks to the kind blog follower who sent me this poem from the twelfth century. It seems very appropriate to me.

I'm also putting up some more of me recent postcard finds from Deptford Market.

Deptford Market finds

I regularly travel to Deptford Market in South London. The market days are Wednesday, Friday and Saturday and I most like to rummage through the stalls htat are primarily stocked by house-clearance goods. Its a real lottery as to what might be there from day to day but this is one its' appealing features. I am always attracted to boxes of old photographs or postcard collections. One can form some insight into the character of the person who used to own the once treasured items now scattered out on tables for the world to see and buy. A large percentage of it, I'm sure ends up in landfill if it hasnt sold after a couple of weeks. Here are a few gems I have bought recently.

More to show soon in another post.

Tony from Masterchef

Over the weekend I met up with and old friend and had a fabulous time. Some of my blog followers who live abroad will not know about Tony but for most people living in the United Kingdom at the moment, he is instantly recognizable as one of the (very recent) finalists in this years BBC Mastechef television programme.

Hot on the tail of the competition we had a little 'cook off' and as I had hoped, Tony concocted a delightful little pudding for me which he called Easter Nest. It was delicious, consisting of 'sugar coated pickled plums, crochet cucumber sorbet all sitting in a woven seaweed and samphire nest'.

                                         



 For Tony I whipped up breaded baby hedgehog on langoustine soil, live truffle with carrot and cat litter crumb,vintage chocolate shard with smegma goo.

I learned so much from Tony and may become part of his plans for a change of direction in the future relating to cookery.

Fantastic old postcard

Someone has sent me an image of an old postcard with what is described as 'Bosci aus holz im Schwarzwald'. It appears to be a wooden sculpture of a beast creature very like myself, but strangely painted (I'm guessing) orange. Thanks so much to Gunter in the Black Forest, Germany.

The results of a personal parasitic infestation.

I've been working intensively since the last article on a fascinating series of discoveries. I'm ready to present this on my blog for your enjoyment. Back in late February I was plagued by an attack of itchyness. In case you dont know much about me or haven't looked at my 'more about Bosci' page in the top sidebar area, do so and it'll be evident that I am significantly hairy. All over. All beings suffer with parasitic infestation from time to time and I speculate that factors such as the clement weather and the confined nature of my box abode may have proved to provide favourable conditions for increased parasitic manifestations to occur, on me! After enduring for a while I decided it was soon enough time to examine myself by which I mean to examine my fur, to discover what might be causing all the annoying itching. 
A simple close inspection revealed a plethora of little creatures. Should one be disgusted by this? I'll leave that for you to decide. What I really want to blog about though is what was to follow on from this initial discovery. With a small jewelers loupe, I took a close look at the tiny critters plucked from my surface and even under such minor 10 fold magnification I was entranced by the complex nature of the beasts which were feasting on (I presume) my blood. There were definitely three distinct animal shapes all between 0.5 to 1.2 mm in length.

I made initial drawings at this stage.....

Spurred on to see in more detail I constructed a simple compact electron microscope. I will describe this endeavour another time in a separate blog post. I was very happy with some of the results. 

It was immediately apparent that there were in fact five different species of creature. This one is a crab-like beast with large pincer/jaws used to cling firmly onto hair strands. These were exclusively in my armpit area and very difficult to remove.

This image shows two other species together in the same shot. These creatures were remarkable tough and when plucked off and crushed between fingers with all my mite, the longer scorpion like beasts still wriggled away in search of a safe haven seemingly totally unharmed.

Here is a shot of a much rarer creature. This image was made before refining some of the microscopes settings, hence its lacking colour. These mites were eating skin flakes and other fleshy surface debris I believe. 

Then there are these remarkable little things which seem fully hairy rather like myself. During one closer inspection I discovered that these creatures did themselves bear their own even tinier parasites. You can just make one out on the right hand most critter. I was able to tweak the gamma condensing lens and add secondary scanning coils to increase magnification to around 750x and lo and behold in amongst the hairs of the creature (I have named ichius pilosus) were many of its own six legged parasites scampering around at great speed, shown here.

I have presented my findings to a local naturalist at the Horniman Museum and he assures me that all six type of animal are seemingly new to science having never before been recorded. Its possible I may get to officially name all six species but in the meantime I have temporarily given them the names;

 scabius maximus (located mostly around the genital area)
 morsus prolixus (this one causes the most pain of all)
 ichius pilosus (the little hairy two armed beast, living mostly in and around my ears)
 phlangy (the miniscual parasite living on ichius maximus)
 plob (with enormous pincers and tentacles, found in the armpit area)

The story doesnt end here. 

I was so thrilled with my discoveries that I decided to use these newly discovered critters as the subject for another batch of Bosci based rubber model products. My earlier development of a flying Bosci toy is documented in an older post on this blog (below). Using the same I approach I crafted moulds which enable the mass production of highly accurate rubber representations of the parasites. Having noticed that these minute monsters were able to endure shockingly violent force i.e. squishing, pinching and crushing and still survive remarkably well, I was particularly keen to mimic this property in the toy versions. I have exaggerated the colouration of some of the bug toys to add variety and intrigue for the potential purchaser. The bugs are sold in packs of four.

The humans whose house I have my abode in are busy preparing for an open studio this coming weekend and I plan to try to sell these products to public visitors who are keen to buy. 

Boscian look-alikes?

I've been sent several images from people enquiring whether their image is of me. I'm going to start a separate page on the blog here (in the 'pages' section at the top right) for Look-alikes, so please do send more images. 

This looks like a Polaroid image. Its not me, but I can see why Marcel Dzama has sent it to inquire whether it is. 

This one was sent by 'anonymous' and does bear a remarkable similarity to me. It's possibly a distant relative and I shall investigate further.

Definitely not me. Too green. Sent by Vanessa Woolfe.

This one definitely is me. Thanks to 'Derek' from Nunhead for sending it in to my blog.

(by the way you can contact me by clicking on 'more about Bosci' button in the side-bar to view my e-mail address at the bottom of this section). Derek took this picture during my appearance in 2012 in the Nunhead Open Art Exhbition. I spent two days in a deep meditative trance whilst visitors entered my darkened cell where they could examine an earlier manifestation of my cupboard-possessions-museum. This has now transmuted into my current chamber where I sit, sleep, work and contemplate and which also houses my growing collection of important objects and living essentials. 

Monstrosities

What a fascinating word 'monster' is. Some people have described me as a monster. I'm simply different. I came across a reference to a monstrosity in one of my found Illustrated London News compilations (more about these in my 'prevention of stuffiness' post below, 2nd Jan 2015). I found a picture of a plant monstrosity from Kew Gardens and some amazing pictures of some Michelangelo sculptures that were forgotten and encrusted with coverings of earth and debris. I've also included another clipping that I liked with some invaluable advise.  

These clippings shall go on the wall of my cabinet.

Some of my drawings

Here are some drawings from my current log of ideas for equipment for myself. These are all things I hope to make myself or commission professionals to construct. The road car is a long term goal. Spectacles, I dont need yet but anticipate one day I may require and realise that conventional spectacles wont easily stay on my head. I'm hoping to enhance my megare diet with more fish based food, hence the diving apparatus. 

Gertrudes a winner!

Last Tuesday I was thrilled to see this blog clock up exactly 100 page views. This is so exciting. To celebrate this event I decided I should award a prize to my magnificent 100th viewer. I managed to track down a Ms Gertrude Leadbeater from Bagshot in the UK and offered her one of my Flying Rubber Bosci toys. Well done Gertrude.

 

Shame she didnt want the toy though. 

Flying Bosci toy

A while back, someone sent me two pictures they had taken in the Viaduct Basin area of Aukland, New Zealand. Two young artists were completing a massive mural and one of the characters looks remarkably like me. Me wearing a cape like a super-hero. This reminded me of how in my youth I had loved and collected rubber monster and super hero toys. 

I decided I should endeavour to make a toy of this type with myself as subject. These toys were prevalent in the 1960's and 70's and are now highly collectable. I found several images on the internet of the sort of things I remembered so fondly.

I began by sculpting a rough figure in plasticine. The toy would be made using a two piece plaster mould. I added detail like fur and wings to the plaster with tools after the rough cast was made.

It was a complex process made difficult by the confines of my small

cabinet. However I was very happy with the completed mould.

I am now able to mass produce these toys.

They have an elastic string in the back so they can be hung

dangling from the rear-view mirror of a conventional car.