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.
The local arts council is having a show that challenges artists to make art that is no more than 2″ in any dimension. Here’s what I created. The little whirligig on the top spins when you blow on it.
The base is made of the official 2″ square canvas I was given by the arts council and part of a suction cup. The sculpture itself is made of corrugated cardboard, beads, a pin, a security envelope, googly eyes, gold paint, and microbead glitter.
My friend Jane Case Vickers and I have both been working on art for a local exhibit. The theme is the Prodigal story in the Gospel of Luke. We’ve been discussing her artist’s statement to accompany her art and she was curious what my artist’s statement said. Here it is:
I took as my inspiration the two brothers, their struggles, their interplay, and their shortcomings. In the parable, neither brother plays the role of the exemplary son. One leaves his father, squanders his inheritance, associates with prostitutes and then pigs. When he returns home, the other son angrily and bitterly refuses to join his father in the celebration that his brother has been found and his place in the family restored.
In my sculpture, the two brothers appear as two golden figures suspended in the mechanics of the piece. One hangs from the upper section. This section is actually the rotor of a whirligig, and you can activate it by blowing on it. When the whirligig spins, it carries this figure in endless, unproductive circles. Through a series of wires and strings, the second figure is also connected to the spinning whirligig. In this way, as one brother spins around and around the second brother is jerked back and forth, suspended just above the ground.
The piece is a metaphor for the very human and very familiar actions and reactions within this parable. It illustrates the ways that we, as human beings, fall short and the way that these shortcomings impact our relationships with each other and with God.
Separately, I enjoy making art that celebrates found objects in all their beauty, and I particularly enjoy the way the found materials in this piece resonate with the parable of the Prodigal/Two Brothers and its place among several parables illustrating God’s rejoicing that the lost is found.
Found objects in this piece include: rusty bed springs, a coat hanger, pop/beer cans, twist ties, shower curtain rings, Mardi Gras babies, old beads, old jewelry, gold leaf, cardboard, sewing machine bobbins, a beater I found in the street, half an ornament I found in the street, a ballerina cake decoration, an old needle case, odds and ends off some Christmas crackers, fabric leftover from another project, a star from a stuffed animal, a Barbie leg, and wire.
Here’s my “Two Brothers” piece in motion. It’s wind powered, so I set up a fan to make it spin. It makes a pleasant little tinkling and clinking sound as it spins. Too bad I couldn’t get that on the video.
I just about have this piece complete. It’s appeared in many previous posts as a work in progress. I took it outside today to see if there was enough breeze to turn the whirligig, but there wasn’t. Too bad.
It’s inspired by the story of the prodigal in Luke 15:11-32. There are two golden babies on it for the two brothers in the story. One spins endlessly from beneath the whirligig and the other is suspended from the mixer beater and gets yanked around as the whirligig spins. There’s a lot of excess and a lot of joy in finding the lost (as in: finding beauty in trash).
If you’re wondering what it’s made out of, the answer is a lot of stuff I found. The only thing I actually purchased for the piece was glitter. Other materials are: rusty bed springs, a coat hanger, pop/beer cans, twist ties, shower curtain rings, Mardi Gras babies, old beads, old jewelry, gold leaf (yes, it came to me second hand), cardboard, sewing machine bobbins, a beater I found in the street, half an ornament I found in the street, a ballerina cake decoration (OK, so I bought that years ago at a junk store with the intention of using it for art), an old needle case, odds and ends off some Christmas crackers, fabric leftover from something else, a star from a stuffed animal, a Barbie leg, and wire.
This is the piece I’m working on right now. My dilemma is that I’m not sure I can exhibit it anywhere because it’s so fragile and it begs to be touched at the same time. The little copper wire in the center of this photo is a big part of the problem. The piece is a whirligig and you can blow on it to get it to rotate. I’d wanted the main whirligig to drive some other motion on the piece and after a lot of trial and error I got this little wire to successfully move a gilded electric mixer beater. The connection is tenuous, and if anyone prods it in the wrong way it will bend or break.
It’s a problem I run into on a lot of my art. I’ve got all kinds of stuff on the surface. It asks you to touch and explore. It’s playful. Approachable. Modeled on a toy but very much not something to play with. I want the viewer to interact with it, but not by touch.
I’m not sure what the solution will be.
Amy Rich 