SCULPTURE

We are still following the art show "Work of Art - Finding the Next Great Artist" on tv. The challenge for the contestants was to spend 30 minutes in a warehouse that had discarded electronics. They could gather and take any items they wished to make a sculpture.

Our at home challenge was easy - head to the basement for some bits and bobs to create our own smaller scale sculpture. Ironically, the day after viewing the show we were leaving the library where I found a crunched cell phone in the parking lot. Perfect! Found, free and fitting to my attitude about cell phones (I won't go there at this time!). Other items I gathered were a packet of wire Christmas hooks (for hanging tree ornaments), a small lamp shade frame, corrugated paper from cookie packaging, an old light that one would affix to a book, an old light bulb, sandpaper, a metal thingy, two large bolt type screws, a poppy seed head and some coffee sack burlap.

My artistic process is to not plan ahead and just see where the supplies take me. A sculpture of a female with a broken cell phone head and Medusa like wiry hair materialized. She wore a hessian dress and a tag with her name - Collette 604A around her inverted light bulb neck. Some rough, natural coloured twine added to her hair and attire. The bendy part of the light acted as a microphone or mouth piece making the piece look both futuristic and rustic simultaneously. She looks good in the garden and I found the perfect bit of smooth driftwood to mount her on when she comes back inside.

My husband went scrounging too. His sculpture was a wire man walking a dog constructed from an old bicycle light, an over sized spring for a body and nail legs. A length of random chain acted as a lead and a two bits of Styrofoam insulation made great feet to anchor this small sculpture.

Challenges such as these are fun, inspiring especially using all found objects with nothing more than a glue gun to assemble the piece.