Another Egg Carton Purse

Another girlfriend's birthday, and this girlfriend is wonderfully wacky, so I took it from there!  I used paint, paper scraps, twigs, a few beads, feathers, recycled ribbon, and a rusty wire for the handle.

I filled it with stuff I found around my house: a tiny package of samples from my paper collection, chocolates, barrettes, snappers, a few beads (some of which she had once given to me) on an old ski pass chain.

And I wrapped it in a graffitied grocery bag.

More inspiration: El Anatsui

Yesterday I went to the Clark Museum in Williamstown, MA to see an astounding, gorgeous show of work by African artist El Anatsui.  Born in Ghana, he's worked in Nigeria for the past 25 years or so, a professor of sculpture at the University of Nigeria.  The works were large sculptural wall hangings made entirely of discarded aluminum tops from liquor bottles, pieced together with copper wire.

The work looks in many ways like traditional kente cloth from Ghana, as well containing many patterns that put me in mind of traditional American quilting. They are constructed like a quilt, in smaller squares, and then assembled into the larger piece.

The work not only addresses waste, recycling, and consumption, but El Anatsui provides an historical context: "Alcohol was one of the commodities [Europeans] brought with them to exchange for goods in Africa.  Eventually alcohol became one of the items used in the trans-Atlantic slave trade...I thought that the bottle caps had a strong reference to the history of Africa."

If you find yourself in the area, the Clark is a special place to visit.  The grounds are beautiful and this particular show is in the Stone Hill Center, a separate hilltop gallery with a contemplative vibe, accessible by a system of pretty hiking trails or by car. The show is there through 10/16.

http://www.clarkart.edu/

Magazine Collage

I think magazines are a treasure trove of images waiting to be turned into other images.  These collages are cut up pages that I put together in different ways. They're glued onto some discarded brown paper.  You might even see these two shopping some day if you're walking on Madison Avenue.  The Martian fashionista might be a brother from another planet who came all the way to NYC to shop.  If you look closely, you'll see books, the Motorola logo, an upside down high-fashion purse, a lampshade.

Cardboard Tubes

Those tubes inside of toilet paper, paper towels, wrapping paper, etc. can be turned into so many things.  I work in a child welfare agency, so there is a medical clinic just down the hall from my office.  They know my scrounging ways, so started saving the cardboard tubes from inside the paper rolls that cover the examining tables.  And the kids took it from there!  They were drawn to the idea of painting the tubes, and the resulting communal hanging sculpture hangs over my office desk.

  

Family Tree

A number of years ago, I had about a hundred pre-made paper mache masks to spray paint white in preparation for an art project at a family picnic at work.

When I finished, I realized that I actually had some new negative space canvasses to fool around with.  So I cut some of them up and played around with them.

Eventually, I did a more elaborate piece called Family Tree.  It's about all my mysterious ancestors whom I know nothing about, but whom undoubtedly had a lot to do with who I am today.  I thought the ghost-like images captured them perfectly.  Other than some random sequins and wires (holding up the shelf), the decorative elements are all natural, even though you might not recognize the twigs because I spray painted them red. Okay, I admit that I had to order a dozen blown-out quail eggs on eBay because regular chicken eggs were too big to fit in the nest.

Mobiles

More rusty wire uses!  The first is a more traditional-style mobile using corrugated cardboard, some origami paper, and some other wires and decorations saved over the years from who knows where.  The wire men have heads made from fleece scraps.

Paper Bag Mask

Here's a mask made from a brown paper grocery bag, displayed on two boxes glue-gunned together. I used paint, twigs, fabric scraps, and a little glitter, but any materials on hand would be fun to use. And it's wearable, too!

Styrofoam: Can we learn to love it?

Does anybody NOT hate those styrofoam peanuts that come in packages and are loaded with static so they cling to you? Well, it turns out they, too, can be an art material. I worked as an arts & crafts counselor at an amazing, wonderful camp this summer called Camp Amerikids. This was my lei for the unforgettable luau dance. It's decorated with a little paint, plastic bag ties, and some metallic ties that I once picked up in the dollar store.

More jewelry: telephone wire casing

Colored telephone wire is high on my list of materials I love, but it took me awhile to realize that the casing for the wires was an art material too! These beads were made by slicing the casing into short lengths and layering them with paper scraps. I used Mod Podge, but Elmer's thinned with a little water would work well too. This piece is reminiscent of kids' macaroni necklaces, but much sturdier! To come: stuff made from the great colorful wires inside.

Jewelry: Dog Tag Necklace

I've mentioned my collection of rusty double loop tie wires before. I pick them all up while walking my dog Gus in Central Park. This necklace documents our mornings spent together: years worth of dog tags, wires, and other found objects. The yin/yang tag was an unusually great find! I also added some random beads from my collection. I made this a few years ago, so I have some more dog tags to add. I guess we're growing older together! If you know The Dog Song by Nellie McKay, hum it to yourself while you're looking at this necklace. It pretty much sums up how I feel about Gus.

Watts Towers: True inspiration for a junk collector

Although I've been to LA many times, until recently I had never made it to see the Watts Towers. When I finally did several months back, I was awestruck. The towers and the whole compound (17 interconnected structures) were built over a period of 33 years (1921-1954) by an Italian immigrant named Simon Rodia...in his spare time! As related to me by a tour guide, he suffered multiple losses, first his brother and then his daughter, became a reclusive alcoholic, was finally abandoned by his family. He reemerged after some years, bought a lot in Watts, and began to build (singlehandedly!) this amazing place.

He used scrap steel pipes, which he bent to shape by using the nearby railroad tracks as a vise. He covered them with wire mesh and mortar into which he embedded broken glass bottles, cracked tile, broken dishes, seashells, you name it. He worked in a nearby pottery factory and brought home damaged pieces to add to his work, and the neighborhood kids contributed by bringing him junk they collected. The ladder-like structures on the outside of the towers allowed him to climb with all his materials and tools, and he just kept adding rungs as he built higher and higher. The tallest towers are over 99 feet.

When I came back, I showed pictures of the towers to some of the teens I work with. They were greatly inspired by both his life story and his work, and have begun to experiment with embedding found objects into their clay pieces.

For more info, photos, and videos: http://www.wattstowers.us/

Paper Weaving and Quilting

Here are some little ripped paper weavings and some little cut-out quilts made from discarded magazine pages and cat food labels.

Pages from my ripped paper collage book

With all the paper we come across everyday, there are great collage materials literally everywhere. These are just ripped up paper on brown paper grocery bags.  Some of the papers come from my collection of fancier handmade papers, but the rest come from magazines or discarded papers that caught my eye in the recycling bin.  Instead of focusing on the actual images when I browse through magazines looking for good collage materials, I focus on colors, shapes, and textures.  

Found Mask

I came across this mask in a parking lot. It's actually one of those cardboard drink carriers that had been run over repeatedly by cars and looked exactly like this when I found it.  I tried inking it and running it through a press, but I actually liked the original untouched find better.