when horses make words...

got this stellar photo sunday from randy, who runs the great tiki ranch blog. like myself, randy is an ol' timer at the flea and we see him all the time. when he handed me the photo he already knew that it would lead to a 'when horses make words' post on airforms...

i believe the photo is an early one from knott's berry farm, and indeed the horse here was given a short word or a name to spell and would pick up the blocks in the correct order (hopefully). i would love to see the list of words the horse had as a vocabulary, as i'm certain it would be a beautiful piece of concrete poetry.

of course, i can't help but look at these things as sculpture, in relation to the work of someone like ree morton or richard tuttle. the objects are humble and awkward and, of course, have a special quality that only a block letter object made for a horse to spell with can have.

personally, i'd like to give the horse some blocks with the notes a-g on them and let him put together a musical score...