I want to commit artwork.

[kiya]

(Thought provoked by one of elisem's entry-concluding questions.)

I don't really know how to work with metal, and I don't have the . . . parts.

I wonder if the museum I dimly remember from my childhood as being in Southie still exists, and still sells random scraps and cast-away . . . bits.

I wonder if there's somewhere in Boston like the place brooksmoses pointed out at one point, as being a place where one could get odds and ends and bits and scraps. I think that was something he said, but my memory is shot. . . so I'll ask.

I want to commit artwork with edges. I want to commit artwork with copper that will go green someday. I want to commit artwork in three dimensions, which I haven't done for so long it just now strikes me that it fucking hurts.

I don't know what artwork I want to commit, but I can see pieces of it, in silhouette, in hints, in lines in my mind, in the way something curves.

I would say I want to commit artwork in metal and glass, but that I know I can't pull off, I just don't have the skills. But that's the feel. Metal and glass. Edges. Lines. Curves. Negative space. Edges.

*broad, indicative gestures* Thing.


Addendum: I find my mood inexplicably brightened by the existence of a bouncing cat head for 'morose'.

Comments

some places to get interesting scrap

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

are junkyards and industrial liquidators. the latter simply rock IMO.

you can work with metal without serious toolage if the metal is thin enough -- mesh, wire, or thin plate. you can work with glass if you cut it instead of melting it, or if you use broken pieces for mosaic, or if you use manmade bits -- marbles, maybe? the sort of round, half-dome pieces one can get in craft stores to put into vases with or without flowers? they come in various colours, and iridescent. you can also get pieces that have washed up on the beach there if you don't have a beach handy. or you can work with the type of glass people work with who do lamp beads; it only requires a hand torch and some tools you probably already have, but i've never done it so don't know about the learning curve, only that it's less than for glass blowing. how about stained glass? supplies also easily gotten in craft stores.

Re: some places to get interesting scrap

[kiya]

Oooh. There's thoughts. *adds 'em to the list that Brooks sent me when I asked*

I might take a potter along the beach and see if I find anything when it cools down some; that feels like an appropriate mode of thought. (I'm a ten-minute walk from the Massachusetts Bay. I've got nearby beach about two-thirds of the time; the rest of the time I've got salt water slurping the feet of the seawall.)

Metal and glasswork have both fascinated me for ages. I worked a little with both in high school -- brass . . . I'd put it between 'foil' and 'plate'. Sharp little bastards, cut up my hands something fierce. And assembling mosaics.

. . . huh. The church I went to when I was a kid had a gigantic stained glass window, with pieces of glass maybe averaging the size of my fist /now/, all different sorts of glass, some broken with . . . damnit, lost the word, curved stress fractures, like obsidian does . . . some just broken. I wonder if that's where some of the fascination with glass and light comes from.