As my previous blog entries have been rather bleak and somber, today's focus will be decidedly brighter-- today, we talk art. Now I've always been something of a wannabe-struggling-artist; I paint here and there for friends and family, I sketch from time to time, but I've never really taken it all too seriously.
Recently, however, I have become exposed to a new craft, a beautiful deviation of what I might call the "staples of art" (ie. painting, drawing, sculpting). My boyfriend's mother opened my eyes to the wild ride of mosaicking, and it's a trip that I haven't been able to get off of since its inception in my life.
Mosaics, like any other art, are a release-- a projection of one's ideas or feelings, a palpable supplement of the world of the mind. They are also things of beauty; they spice up our everday drab with colour, vibrancy and creativity. But what I love most about mosaics, and it is something that divorces its practice from conventional art forms, is that they are, for the most part, made from reused and recycled products!
Take, for example, my last project:
I had found an old crooked and cobwebby stool in the basement of my house. Needing a stool for one of my plants to sit on, I decided to give this little Cinderella-stool a new ballgown. I took an old brown and beige glass lampshade, one that you might see dangling over an old pooltable somewhere, and hammered out the glass bits so that I had a pile of brown and beige shards. I glued each peace onto the top of the stool (the glue I had to buy at a craftshop), used some old grout of my father's (who is a carpenter and had had the grout wasting away down in his cellar), spread the grout and let it dry... and voila! A decent-looking stool.
(pictures to follow)
The thing is, there's no end to this or any other craft project because the materials you need are EVERYWHERE. They're in your garbage, in your grandparent's cabinets, in your basements and in your garages. The possibilities are infinite. I can remember when I first started mosaicking-- suddenly the world took on a whole new meaning. Garbage was no longer garbage; it was a source of art! I found myself raiding the dinnerware aisles of second-hand shops, anticipating that next great find. Garage sales were goldmines of trinkets and goodies. Their trash was my treasure. So the next time you go throwing out perfectly good dishes, or cutlery, or lamps, or buttons, or whatever it may be, think of me and all the other craft-makers out there who might just have a better place for it than your nearby toppling landfill.
In the world we live in today, garbage is everywhere. And garbage will continue to be everywhere. But maybe, through art and creative minds, we can change the role that our waste plays in this world. Maybe garbage doesn't have to be a filthy, overbearing problem. Maybe it can be a beautiful work of art.
Incredible piece by Tim Noble and Sue Webster, comprised of a full six months of their garbage!
Artist HA Schult began building life-sized “trash people” in 1996 from garbage he collected in his hometown of Cologne, Germany.
