Monday, November 16, 2009

Trash to Treasure

"Weather Island"

Happy Monday!

I finally documented my most recent paintings today because the weather was so beautiful; perfect light for taking photos.  It was a great experience because a few people from the neighborhood were very friendly and stopped by to see what I was doing.  A certain group of three were very interested and listened when I explained the fact that many of the paintings start as recognizable images (like monkeys and shoes) and then get abstracted in my process.  They seemed excited when they started to be able to see the monkey face or the pair of excellent cowboy boots.  Great fun!

It was so nice outside and I was getting such good vibes from the neighborhood that I suddenly had a great idea: to collect trash on my street and make a sculpture to be put back into the landscape.  "Weather Island" is what I made.
  

I'm not totally excited about how it looks from afar...  It still looks like random trash... not enough of something that might make someone look twice when they pass by.

Up close, however, I think it looks really fun and the colors  and lines work really well with the surroundings.

I collected trash for about one minute, took it into my studio.  Used scissors, Elmer's glue and hot glue to alter and re-attach all of the trash.  I used every bit that I picked up.  I'm going to try lighting it and photographing it at night to see what shadows do for the material transformation.  The lighting might just be the trick for adding the bit of I-don't-know-what to make passers-by stop and look.

3 comments:

elisa said...

That is soo cool! Well... not the part that it only took one minute to get trash from the neighborhood - why are there so many people who think litering is okay? Anyway - what a fun thing to come up to on the street! I think you did a great job =)

megan bisbee said...

Thanks Elisa! I was thinking it would be fun to make one every day for a week or something like that... also to try and incorporate them more into the landscape. I thought about using something like chewing gum to make them (instead of hot glue-- stick wi th the "usual litter" category of materials 100%) and leave them out there to fall apart as they will... so many ideas so little time :-) Thanks again for your comment!

Alison Shanik said...

And now it's in a gallery show! Amazing! You should come visit it!