Anita’s Blog — Something for Everyone

This is fun, easy and relaxing.

If you’re still cautious about keeping your distance but finding you’re running out of self-isolation projects, stay home and consider building an objet d’art.

Clean trash sculpture, found objects art, trash art, junk art, funk art, repurposing, recycling, temporary-relief-from-anxiety art — call it what you want, it’s a project you can start and keep adding to for as long as you want.

First, you want to stay home and order the glue via the Internet. Liquid Nails adhesive, clear, (2.5 fl oz), in blue and gold packaging — buy two.

While you’re waiting for the glue to arrive, begin collecting. This will require you to change your actions a bit because you’re used to throwing trash away, not saving it. So, before you toss, stop and think if you can use it, or part of it, for your project.

A successful creation begins with a sturdy base. The larger the base, the larger/taller your end result. I received a delivery in a box the other day that is perfect for starting a sculpture (14” X 10” X 3”). Smaller is certainly fine, too, like a tissue, cereal, shoe or frozen dinner box.

Most articles that will go in your project will be smaller than your base. As you progress, it’s fun to cantilever objects and experiment with balance, but you want the end product to stand on its own. — Or not, there’s always the caterpillar concept.

Paper and cardboard products work best. Styrofoam does not stick with this glue. Plastic lids can be made to stick, but may have to be held for a couple of minutes. A good thing to occupy yourself with during TV commercials.

I usually had one of these trash sculptures going in the hotel room when I’d deploy to a federally-declared disaster with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). It can be a calming, right brain activity. It helped relieve the stress of a hectic day as I chilled out with mindless TV entertainment. Adding to the sculpture in the morning with my first cup of coffee was fun, too. I’d move the sculpture between a counter top and coffee table.

I also started trash art projects in disaster field offices for fellow FEMA workers. The projects were popular. People stopped to add something to them when they took a break, or walked by. At times, there would be three sculptures going at once.

Things to collect while waiting for the glue to arrive in the mail:

• Bottle caps of all sizes and colors. Small bottles as they are emptied, like vitamins. Some plastics will not stick with this glue.
• Frozen dinner boxes, empty cereal boxes, any small box. Tape up the open end of the larger, flimsy boxes for more support, especially those you’ll use in the base.
• Paper towel/toilet tissue rolls, thin cardboard hot-drink snugs, straws. Mostly things that have no weight to them, per se. Colorful paper or magazine pages can be cut down and fan-folded — once you start your imagination going, it will continue to flow without any effort and you’ll begin figuring out all sorts of things to add.

Once your glue arrives, you can use the cone-shaped piece as a sculpture add-on. Don’t use it on the glue tube. Use as little glue as possible to get things to adhere. In other words, be conservative with the glue and replace the cap between uses, which will keep the glue from drying up.

This project can last as long as you want to keep adding on to it. The sculpture can be added to from the bottom, as well as upwards, if you find a larger base object and you want to extend your project.

In the end, you can paint the whole piece, paint parts in different colors, leave it as is, and when you’re tired of it, photograph it from all angles and then simply throw it away.

An equally time-consuming project, but not as creatively satisfying, is to cut or tear into small pieces the non-shiny paper/cardboard materials you’ve collected and add them to your compost pile.

This is conceivably a native (Port Arthur, Texas) project — by a long stretch of the imagination, so I feel justified in sharing. Certainly, objects found in nature around your yard would make excellent objects to include in your sculpture, like a hooded oriole nest blown down on a palm frond, partial bird egg shells found in the grass, tiny sticks covered in lichen, feathers, snake skins, dead bugs empty snail shells, dried seed pods.

Let us hear about some of your projects.

To read about the Port Arthur connection, check out this link:

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/famous-artists/robert-rauschenberg.htm