Recycled and Other Unusual Art Material...

Last year in a time of frustration with art making, I took  a couple of months off  to allow the muse to show me a direction. Part of my "aha" moment came from the imaginations of those artist who found their inspiration in materials apart from the classical. In a way, you could consider today's blog as a retrospective.

The first artist touched me deeply. His name is Do-ho Suh and he's a sculptor. He made a powerful political statement using dog tags to create "The Emperor's Robe."

http://r-atencio.blogspot.com/2010/05/do-ho-suh-and-haunting-sculpture.html

In a much less social or political way, there was Alexander Caldwell, I love to play and he had a great sense of art as play. He used a wonderfully bright color palette. He also invented the mobile; thereby providing a never-ending source of movement and fascination .
http://r-atencio.blogspot.com/2010/06/calder-artist-who-made-art-fun.html

My last artist, who was featured in a blog, was Simon Rodia. In his own humble way and with found objects, he built the Watts Towers.
http://r-atencio.blogspot.com/2011/02/simon-rodias-vision.html

There is one more artist - someone I've yet to write about - named Eva Jospin. She sculpts in cardboard. I'll be featuring her in a future blog.

Adding the inspiration of these artists to the desires of my muse, I began a series titled, "Textures and Dimensions." They combine found objects, recycled cardboard, recycled wood, paper and foamcore,

"VERTICALS": (cardboard, cork, styrene)

"EROSION": (Recycled wood door)

"THE EQUINOXES": (Cardboard, clay, and recycled doors)

The processes proceed very slowly from finding the right materials, cutting, pasting, gluing, drying and painting. That's in a way of explaining why I've been absent from this art blog. Nice to be back!