Pianos can become the heart of a home, and some become inter-generational heirlooms loaded with memories. Letting them go once they're unplayable can be very hard, but an Australian sculptor has found a way to resurrect them, to magical effect.
David Cox is a sculptor and an avid collector of junk. So, in March 2022, when a friend of his asked him to create something cool to hang on his recording studio wall, Cox decided to get creative with an old set of piano keys sitting he had found. His friend loved his resulting sculpture - which he christened 'Phoenix' - and so did many others who saw it in the recording studio.
While Cox started out using random piano parts he'd gathered from here and there, it wasn't long before people started approaching him about the idea of 'memorializing' beloved family heirloom pianos. "For a lot of people, that piano's just always been there since their childhood," Cox told New Atlas. "Some of them are a hundred years old. But in a lot of cases, the harp in the back gets cracked, or it gets rusted out... They break down. And then, the instrument has to go. It's 250 kg, they're doing something different with the living room... But there's so many memories wrapped up in it."
Considering the accidental way this project started out, Cox landed on a remarkably poetic shape. These beloved instruments rise from their own ashes to a new pride of place on the wall as a phoenix. Once the sonic centre of the home, now a magical visual display.
By March 2024, Cox had created 50 phoenix sculptures.