Thursday, September 12, 2013

Junkyard Jewels

copper and found objects bracelets

































My humble offering to the "junkyard war" - an exercise from the Creativity, Innovation and Change course I'm taking. 


Background that lead me to create this.....

We currently have a big issue going on in my neighbourhood right now (which is turning into an environmental law suit) so I've been talking a lot about reducing our consumption of plastics and man-made things. 

In a nutshell...a company applied for a permit to dump contaminated waste in their old quarry site (sounds like a logical thing to do instead of just dumping it just any where). The problem is the site is RIGHT on top of an aquifer and a creek that runs into the lake just 1km away from the site. And the lake is, you guessed it, our water supply (oh, and this area was declared a water protection area 12 years ago by the government). 

The ministry of environment has approved their permit to dump stuff that contains some of the most toxic junk you can imagine. I researched each of the contaminates listed and most of them are chemicals used in plastics and oil products. 

I'm super upset about the permit being granted but after thinking about it more I realized we've actually all contributed to the problem. We drive our cars, buy pre-packaged stuff and we throw out so much waste it's no wonder there's a problem with needing places to dump our contaminated waste. 

We need to stop the issue here but we also need to really take a good look at the bigger picture so it doesn't keep getting worse. So, instead of throwing out all these "useless" bits and pieces (old watches I took apart, an old computer mouse and a bunch of other electronics....I think there's a cel phone in there) I put them together and created my junkyard jewels which hopefully will last for much longer an not become part of the problem.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

creative critter

Here's a great project I learned this summer. It starts with a couple of random blobs of paint and morphs into fun critters.

You can do this alone or with others which is really fun because then you add on to what the others start.

One your paper randomly paint a couple of blob shapes....they don't have to be any shape in particular just use fairly thin paint. Alternatively, you can use colour markers or pencils.....just get a couple of blobs onto your paper.

If you're working/playing with others pass your blobs to someone else to do the next step.

Next step: rotate the paper around until you find a form you can work with and add some eyes. Then outline the shapes using a black marker. Make it rough and fluid - keep your arms and hands relaxed. Then you can pass it on again (or keep working on it yourself) for the next person to add details. Keep adding details until you're happy with your critter. You can add some words to express how you're feeling or write a poem or add a quote. Pour your emotion into it so if you're feeling cranky make it a cranky critter. By the time you're done you won't feel so cranky anymore!