Since I last posted about making art from found objects, I’ve completed the crown I was working on, and I made another mobile.
For the crown, I added some color and texture to the four wires on top. I used a couple of bracelets and a beaded necklace, winding them around each portion of the wires. Here’s how the crown looks hanging in the window:
Yesterday, I made a new mobile from some pieces I’d picked up at the thrift store. We have a “World-Famous 25-Cent Shelf,” on which you can find all manner of miscellaneous items for a quarter apiece. Here’s how the mobile looks:
The circular metal at the top and the spiral in the center came from the 25-cent shelf. I put some blue beads onto the spiral, wrapped some wires around a thin tube to make them squiggly, and then hung three wind chimes from them. Through the center of the spiral, I suspended a Zuni ring I had bought in New Mexico in 1987. In the circle at the top, I hung a piece of white quartz I’d found at the store.
Today at work, I picked up some more items from the 25-cent shelf, mostly odd and interesting pieces of metal that I can use for the frames of my art work. Then, to my heart’s delight, I found out about a box of metal items in the sorting room.
All the metal was going out for salvage, and I could take anything I wanted, for free. I ended up with several white wire hangers (that I can take apart and mold for wiring), a whisk, some small spoons, and a bottle opener. They will all get turned into art, eventually.
I’m really looking forward to tag sale season. Around here, after tag sales, people leave all the stuff that didn’t get sold in boxes by the sidewalk. There will be more free stuff to salvage and use. My basic rule for the items that make up my art work is that they be used (rather than new), and that they be free, or cost a dollar or less. It’s extraordinary what you can find.
© 2009 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg
You should show your stuff somewhere, like a gallery.