The Scriptorium centers on a delicately balanced, kinetic, figurative sculpture; a 25 foot long mythological writing teacher in steel which holds, respectively, a bamboo stylus and a lantern to light its work. The body is a chimera of mammalian, reptilian and human parts. As the wind pushes a sail on its back the creature rotates, its inscribing arm extending, creating a drawing like a spirograph on the ground. The sculpture balances on a single pin and is free to rotate.  Surrounding the instructor viewers can sit at low writing boxes where they are provided with tools such as styluses and rakes to imitate the teacher at work.

In the paradigm of art-as-environment, as narrative to be entered and experienced from within, Scriptorium draws the viewer into a world of sentient sculpture where wood and steel and flapping canvas come alive, prepared to nurture or consume them. 

Simply by cycling through the Scriptorium, seating themselves and playing with the tools they find, viewers enact a recurring mythological opera. They cast themselves as truth-seekers, supplicants and students of an ancient art in peregrination to a supernatural teacher. Patron demigods of writing (among many other crafts) abound in the mythological record and by acting parts in this unfolding drama participants not only recount these fables but explore themes of evolution and the human relationship to the lessons of the natural or un-natural world.