Some real artmaking actually happened yesterday in town and I finished up my Transformed Treasures. The idea behind the Salvation Army fundraiser is to find a “treasure” at the Salvation Army Thrift Store and “transform” it into a work of art that will be auctioned off at a May 1, luncheon. My Thrift Store finds were the small wooden bank and a foam/resin plaque of St. Francis, the patron saint of animals and ecology. Lacking a good solid grasp of Catholicism I had to google St. Francis because I first thought he was St. Peter but when I read
that there was no mention of animals associated with St. Peter I knew
it was another guy who was the patron saint of animals. You find a lot of garden sculptures depicting St. Francis holding small animals and gardening tools. My mom has a beautiful bird feeder statuary of St. Francis that offers bird seed from his hands that I especially enjoy. When I found this plaque I knew immediately that I wanted to “transform” it using plasma cut and welded steel vines to create an outdoor hung wall sculpture. My thought was that it would look great on the outside of a greenhouse or on the fence near a garden. It’s finished size is about 32” tall by 20" wide.
I need to add some enamel paint finishes to doctor up some wear and tear on the plaque and mend some burn holes… Yeah, almost set the whole thing on fire when I was welding the finishing leaves to the front! The hilarious part was when it first caught on fire, I panicked and was actually trying to blow out the stupid fame from INSIDE my welding helmet!! Duh. I finally got a spray bottle of water to weld the other leaves attaching the plaque and squirted out the mini flames right away. The little wooden bank is now a
5’ tall Topiary Bird house. Those little Red Cedar logs only caught fire once…
**Oh, and don't forget to vote for our daughter, Kristen's quilt! It's called "Fairbanks Birdhouse" entered in the Snowman Quilt Challenge at The Material Girls fabric store, in Fairbanks, Alaska. Kristen has started a Blog called Rosie Creek Quilts -in her "spare time" of doing her grad work in chemical oceanography at UAF. Vote by sending an email to materialgirls@alaska.net and vote for "A1"
-THANKS ahead of time to all my blog-buddies around the world!
2 comments:
there's nothing quite like setting your work on fire! i think you'd like raku firing....looking good cindy
So you had some good "firings" ha couldn't resist. I love St. Francis, anything to do with animals, and the cedar bird house is wonderful especially since it is a log cabin, you are so creative mixing different media and always amaze and delight me. I'm off to check out the quilts one of my other loves.
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