Skrakkle Castles

Artist Statement

The Skrakkle Castles: a history By Steve Storz The Skrakkle Empire, though vast, has a mysterious trail that takes any intrepid voyager across many lands and through a time that seems ever unfolding. The earliest known records indicate a man named Hugo Skrakkle who lived in the high mountains of Romania around the mid 1400s. He seems to have been a metallurgist who knew of ways to extract ore from the earth and smelt it into iron. This of itself was no great feat except that there were such quantities of it attributed to his manufacture that a enormous foundry would have been required and a work force of many workmen to accomplish his output. No record or oral tradition can account for this. The myth of the Skrakkle family begins here. It is an astounding tale that has lain in obscurity for hundreds of years owing to it’s wide unaccountability. Like the Lockness Monster of Ireland and the Yeti of the North, the Skrakkle clan are surrounded by uncertainty and speculation, and they are scarcely refered to. A sign of the unbelievability of the fantastic existence they might have fulfilled. Let us proceed with the evidence that has been accumulated over the recent years by various, if not diligent, researchers ( non are here given due to insufficient reference as to their specific identity) who have compiled a broken and staggering history. As the toil of the man Hugo Skrakkle leads on he is said to have built several magnificent castles with the help of a rather insane architect. This architect had the name (here given only in partial as to the fragmented details available) Mo--rqu ---tan--sdu. A quack of the trade at the time of great castlements being erected by such fiends as (then Prince of Wallachia) Vlad Tepes (infamously noted as Vlad, The Impaler). Mo--rqu ---tan--sdu’s structures seemed to be hazardous to the point of complete dread. No one would hire him. His construction methods were so dangerous that none of his pre-Skrakkle work, what little may have existed, has crumbled and vanished. At some point near the mid 13th century he appears to have disappeared for a decade then sided up with Hugo Skrakkle, probably under an assumed name to escape his train of bad omen and blame, to build more of his radical constructions. It seems the amazing combination of the metals produced by Hugo Skrakkle where just the thing for the architect to work with. Like dense cactus armed with skeletons of iron, the frame of the first castles emerged in the Borgo Pass of the Carpathian mountains. A windy, non-inhabited area, often cold and draining to the soul, the cracked rock shelves of the Borgo Pass became the foundation for six castles of varying sizes. Curiously, two of the smaller structures (yet eight stories high each) were evidently meant as guest houses. Any inhabitants registered or even rumored to have stayed at them is completely lacking. Three other towers were intended as main houses for the successive Skrakkle lineage. They were much larger than the guest houses. The final structure was a fantastic edifice called Grand View, that craned out over the Romanian country at a height of nearly 600 feet. Each of the houses has it’s own metal skin covering the rear or windward side of the structures so to keep the blasting air from penetrating the fragmented metal compartments. These skins bear resemblance to a cloak somewhat like the natives of the region wear for similar purpose. Here we must skip ahead to the 19th century where we find scarce journals on the descendent Ernesto Skrakkle great grandson of Hugo who appears to have been re-ignited by the fantastic structures of his great grandfather. These unauthored journals relate that he was excessively distraught with fevers and depressions alternating with fits of anxiety. Over his short life, approximately 1814 to 1865, he commissioned several architects and builders to begin work on more of the strange structures that were to become the Skrakkle legacy of today. The workmen were shown the family’s abodes in the Carpathians and required to resemble their influence in the new castles which were to be built at various plots of land throughout their obscure trans-continental empire. The added factor of local influence was to also be included with each design thereby giving each structure it’s own uniqueness. Here a name emerges of Gelchalk. There is nothing much to distinguish him except that his keen understanding of moment as applied to structuring objects so they can be cantilevered into space became an ostensible element in the more recent compositions. Skrakkle Castle China has a vaguely Pagoda appearance while Skrakkle Castle Seattle has the lean of a majestic, tapering fir tree with a disk structure at the top that gestures to the now famous Space Needle which had not yet been conceived of. Skrakkle Castle Bavaria reminds us of the tall, narrow towers of German country side castles with a small bridge running between two of it’s monoliths. Rue Petite of the Skrakkle Castles in Paris came to be squeezed between two other skinny homes on a very slim plot near the Rue de Bach, while the Skrakkle Castle Major and Skrakkle Castle Minor were in Bucharest nearby to the original Skrakkle homes. The Skrakkle heirs seem now to be incognito or possibly extinct at present as no particular word passes regarding them or their whereabouts. Today the Skrakkle Castles are a thin skeletal contrast to what must have been an exuberant age of family empire, the forms of their magnificent achievement stark against the mist of legend.