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!

Calder: The Artist Who Made Art Fun

As you may already know, the art world takes itself very seriously - not so for Alexander Calder (1898-1976). Calder believed in creativity through playfulness. You have only to look at the YouTube video made in 1955 when he was 57 years of age. He is squatting on the floor playing with a miniature circus with figures he made from wire.

If his names sounds familiar it may be because he is the inventor of the mobile. This invention sprung from being born into a family of famous artists combined with his schooling in mechanics and engineering.


As with other modern artist of the time such as Modrian, he was more drawn to shapes and colors over identifiable objects. His inventive mind led him to create sculptures that would be surprising and playful. When the artist Marcel Duchamp saw the results, he referred to them as "mobiles."

Beyond the Calder's mobiles that made him famous, he would create thousands of items during his lifetime - from large metal sculptures to jewelry. As you look at these images, I bet you can recall seeing at least one object created by Calder and inspired by his sense of playfulness.