Found Object Sculpture Project
Found Object Sculpture Project
Title of my sculpture: Party Machine
Dimensions of the completed sculpture: 21 inches tall and 7 inches wide
Items used from my sculpture:
- Glass bottle
- Metal batter dispenser
- Wire whisks x 2
- Metal bracelet
- Party blowers
- Toy plastic bag (circle cut-outs)
- Metal foot décor
- Toy glasses
- Small funnel
- Toy French Horn
- Wood heart piece
- Plastic mouth piece from party blower (nose piece)
- Metal button
Reflection
I began this project with a few ideas in mind of what I wanted to create. As I drew them on paper and looked around my house for the items I needed, none of the ideas I had in mind seem to come together. I decided to change my strategy and start with an item I had on hand and see where that took me.
I chose a glass bottle. My first thought was to make a lamp out of it. The next item I found was a batter dispenser. I took it apart and placed it upside down on top of the bottle. My sculpture began to take form. However, it didn’t look much like a lamp. To me, it looked more like a robot’s head and the bottle was its body. My imagination began to flow better as I went around the house looking for items to assemble this sculpture.
Next I found two wire whisks that I wanted to use as its arms. My first challenge was figuring out how to attach the wire whisks to the glass bottle. The first thought was to carefully drill a hole on the bottle and insert the whisk; however, I ran the risk of breaking the bottle. Also, I wanted it assembled in a way that it would look like it had its arms up. The more I thought about it, the more complicated it seem to get. I decided to set it aside and come back to it later while I worked on getting the rest of the sculpture assembled as I found more items to use.
Once I had all the items I wanted to use, the sculpture began to take form of what I imagined as a robot with a party hat, playing the French horn. Now it was time to hook the parts together and assemble the sculpture. With the hot glue gun, I started gluing all the pieces in its place. First I began with the nose. I cut a piece of the mouth piece of a party blower and glued it to the batter dispenser, then I cut out two color circles from a toy bag and glued them to the metal dispenser as eyes. Next, I glued the funnel upside down to the top of the dispenser. I used the remaining pieces of the party blower and placed them on top of the funnel. My next step was to glue the toy glassed to the head. It was challenging to place them just right on the same level as the eyes and not too close to the nose. Once I got it glued in place, the rest of the face began to take form. I glued the final piece, the toy French horn, as a mouth piece. I was very happy with the final piece that gave the face of the sculpture its character.
I was now ready to attach the arms to the glass bottle. I decided not to drill the bottle, afraid it would damage it. I tried hot gluing the wire whisks in the position I wanted them in so it would look like it was holding the French horn. It took quite a bit of glue to make them stay up and about fifteen minutes of holding it in place for it to dry. Finally it stayed in place close enough to place the string from the horn around it.
I added the final touches which included; gluing a metal button to the nose piece, gluing a wood heart to the center of the bottle, and attaching the metal bracelet to the neck of the bottle. I was surprised how well it was coming together and very happy with the results.
My next challenge was the foot. I used a metal foot décor as the foot of the sculpture. I placed the bottle on top of it, but the bottle was too wide and too heavy to hold it in place without tipping. To stabilize it, I cut out another small piece from the mouthpiece of a party blower and glued it to the back of the metal foot. It took several tries to get it just the right height. Once I achieved the desired height, it stabilized the bottle in place.
I enjoyed putting this sculpture together. I thought it would be a lot harder to come up with ideas, but once I had the main piece, the rest just fell into place. It turned out better than I expected. If I could make any changes to it, I would have used other items as the feet. I wasn’t satisfied with how it looked with only one foot. However, the reason I used the metal foot was because I wanted to use as much metal as I could to achieve the look of a robot or a tin man perhaps. However, for being the first time, I’m very happy with how it turned out and I’m proud of my results. I thought outside the box and I strived for creativity.