Continuing on the theme of small creatures created from scraps and detritus, here’s a slightly larger creature. It’s currently on display at One Life Church in Evansville as part of an exhibit of artwork inspired by Places.
This piece is 2″ wide and deep but about 6″ tall. Like the previous piece, it has a little propeller that spins. I’ve had fun exhibiting these creatures within glass display cases that add to the appearance that they are collected specimens.
This is the third of three Relics that I made recently. This one is made from two beaded tomatillo husks, thread, a thread spool, an old button, and a weird metal hand from somewhere or other.
I collected the tomatillo husks from the ground in my garden. It was interesting to me how much they softened and didn’t break the more I worked with them as I added beads. By the end, they had started to resemble loosely woven fabric, not brittle leaf veins.
I’ve been working on some new art lately.
One of the boxes of odd objects that I displayed as part of Jane’s and my show in Jasper held tomatillo husks that I collected in my garden last fall. I combined the husks with a wonderful little bit of clothing (used just as it came to me with a safety pin holding it together), some beads, and some cast off silk thread.
It’s no more than 5″ tall and hangs from a pin in a shadow box.
It’s been accepted into the Working Together show at the Evansville Museum put on in conjunction with the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana. Yay!
Here’s a piece that will be part of my upcoming art show. I thought I’d call it Five Things I Want to Remember. It’s made with fabric trim that was given to me in a giant container of cast off odds and ends, wooden spools of thread that came in other big bins of cast offs, beads, and gold leaf.
A couple years ago, I got a whole bunch of gold leaf as part of yet another big box of cast off art supplies. I’ve enjoyed incorporating the gold into my found object art since then. I like the visual metaphor of gold leafed trash. I like thinking of the layer of gold like the layers of meaning that we all give everyday objects. They’re unremarkable objects, yet we handle them and they become precious to us. This can be good and bad.
The gold leaf can also suggest the practice of searching for joy and beauty in the everyday things around us. The gold adds significance and calls attention to details such as the way that thread wraps itself around the spool or the subtle undulations of a roll of trim as it unrolls itself.
There’s nothing like an upcoming deadline to help me be productive. Jane Case Vickers and I have a show coming up in April at the Krempp Gallery at the Jasper Arts Center in Jasper, Indiana.
This weekend I’m working to make art out of my sister’s bead collection. I had one, too. When we were in elementary school or junior high, we discovered a store in Toledo, Ohio that sold nothing but beads. Our bead collections are the result of hours spent searching through all the glittering cups of beads. We would sort them, string them, resort them, and restring them.
I’m working to find a way to highlight the beauty and value that my sister and I gave to these things of little real value, and through that, broader themes of collecting, saving, creating value, and creating beauty.
I finished this piece last week and just found out it was accepted as part of a local art show.
It’s made from a stuffed animal, cat hair, found fabric, and beads.
Amy Rich 