LITTLE BOXES

It's surprising what you can fit into a little box when you put your mind to it . I spent most of the morning photographing my collections and for some reason it gave me enormous pleasure seeing these bits and pieces within the confines of a box.

Soap stone carvings and Indian textile stamps....



Wooden hearts I carved whilst sitting next to the fire one winters night,



As well as my tiny goddess figures.....



Finely crafted wooden salt spoons....

Vintage bottles.....

Beaded safety pins....

Found metal objects....

I love stubby pencils sharpened with a knife...

Grass twine made by a group of women sitting in the shade of thorn trees .... It smells of Africa.

Guinea Fowl feathers and a Plover's egg swept out to sea and back again in time for my husband to find it on the tide mark...



Nature's treasures .... a joy to find.

THE RUSTY STUFF

Assemblage by Benita Murray. Antique Tin exhibition at the east Gippsland Art Gallery, here.


I never get tired of the rusty stuff ! Benita Murray's work caught my attention after I had been browsing through many images of heavy masculine sculpture. Her work is more feminine than most of the metal art one sees, probably because she incorporates the heart motif which does seem to 'soften' many of her pieces.

Another assemblage from Benita Murray's exhibition , Antique Tin.

Benita creates assemblages using rusted sheet iron, tin fragments, steel mesh and twisted cables and rods.

"To be honest, I fell into using the rusty stuff because I love hanging around old farm tips: the ones with great piles of rusted metal built up over generations’ - Benita Murray

Scrap metal architectural panels by John Unger. Website, here.

Junk wall by Schultz. See here.

Queen of Heaven (Shrine to La Virgen de Guadalupe) by Hope Swann. Website here.

Liberated Flow by Frank Strunk. Website here.


Inner City Found Object Assemblage by Don Pezzano. See Don's Etsy Shop here and blog here.

Rusty. Photograph by Jurek Durczak. Flickr photostream here.

Rusty Sculpture. Photo taken by Steve Benway. Flickr photostream here.

Pipe Vase with insulator flowers by PaulaArt. See Paula's Etsy Shop here and blog here.

Fish sculpture by Murray Ambler. See Sculpture on the Edge, here.

OLD BOOKS TRANSFORMED INTO ART

Trawling (detail). Installation by Steve McPherson. See Website here.

Old books with yellowing pages, tattered covers and exposed spines, rescued and reinvented, transformed into art. Whoever would have thought that an artform would arise from a pile of discarded books ..... but then nothing should surprise me when it comes to the ingenuity of artists.

Rediscovery by Joseph Hammer. See more of Joseph's work here.

"I’m a lover of books, and I wonder: will there be books as we now know them in the future? I’m partial to using old, discarded hardback books in collages and am inspired by the varieties of colors and textures on their covers, by how they can be used, like paint, to provoke feelings and emotions, to explore things such as line, color saturation and tension. As a lover of history, I pay tribute to these threadbare, tattered tomes. They provide a look back at the bookbinder’s craft and the careful, sometimes elaborate designs, marbling and gold leaf, of long ago. Deterioration does not diminish their beauty but adds a patina of use, of human “hand prints.” - Joseph Hammer

Collected Letters by Joseph Hammer. See more here.

Cartographic No 1. by Steve McPherson. See website here.

"In my bookworks I use empty old second hand photo albums or scrap books, which I collage and montage straight into with mostly my own images and found objects."

"Taking two to three months to complete each work, the works undergo many changes. Time is spent moving and testing objects, images and text without a single item being fixed permanently in its place. Through editing, re-editing, chance and play, meaningful relationships gradually form between the elements and the layers" - Steve McPherson

"Milieu 4" by Brigitte Riesebrodt. See more of Brigette's work here.

"Milieu 2" by Brigitte Reisebrodt

"Langenscheidt 4" by Brigitte Riesebrodt. See more here.

Jody Alexander "likes to rescue books in distress and give them new life as rebound books, scrolls and sculptural pieces."

Exposed Spines by Jody Alexander. See website here.

Bars (Grey) by John Fraser. See more of John's work here.

"The book is just one component; once it becomes a part of the picture plane I negotiate that plane. Nuance, subtlety, and beauty and all things I think are worth looking at, those all matter to me." - John Fraser

Relief with Rule by John Fraser.

Mixed media using book parts by Roberta Lee Woods. See more of Roberta's work here.

Book sculpture by Jacqueline Rush Lee. See Jacqueline's website here.

PLAIN SAILING

Storm at Sea by Radcliffe Bailey. I love the sea of piano keys! Read article here.


According to The Phrase Finder, plain sailing is a nautical phrase that has the literal meaning of 'sailing that is easy and uncomplicated'. It is now used to describe any straightforward and trouble-free activity.

Boat sculpture by Jonny Mahoney. Click to enlarge, here.

As I mentioned in my last post, creating a new website was not plain sailing but the response from the blogging world made the whole process most enjoyable. Now enough about the website ..... just enjoy all the boat art I've found.

Fe Installation by Laura Tabakman. See Flickr Photostream here. Website here.

Textile art boat by Jacque Davis. See story here.

Boats by Rowena Brown . See Website here.

Pocket Noost by Douglas Robertson. See more intriguing work here.

"The wide river firth of the Tay had a major part to play in my upbringing. Not only did it provide a workplace at the docks for my father, but it was another great source of ideas and images. Strangely enough, many lot of these stem from the futility of fishing with homemade drop lines from the pier at Broughty Ferry as a young boy. Hours spent dangling a line into the water hoping that something would bite. Most of the time the hooks were baited with nothing more than homemade milk bottle cap lures, sparkling in the water below the pier. What I didn't know was that what I was 'catching' was a love of the coastline. The stories of the old fishermen, the history of the river in the Castle Museum, and the colour and mood of the changing river that would be a main part of my artistic vision." - Douglas Robertson

Repository by John Whalley. See more of John's recent work at GREENHUTGALLERIES, here.

Bog Boat from the Deirks by Joe Hogan. See more here at the Kenny Gallery, here.

Eastern Boat. Bronze by John Behan. See more here.

The Collectors by Abott and Ellwood. See more wonderful whimsies here.

‘Our work comes from the places and things we like – the beach, coastal walks, a paddle on our boat, a trip to far off lands… the things we see around us that trigger responses - a piece of coloured paper picked up, an old scrap from a junk shop, plastic washed by the sea, the colour of a wall with sun on it.' - Abott and Ellwood