dead insect

I’ve just started doing evening classes once a week in silversmithing and jewellery making at the community college in Bethnal Green, just for fun.

I plan to make a series of 13 pieces of jewellery – one representing each Inner City Borough of London, using items I find on the floor in each Borough.

The first piece is these Sterling Silver earrings made from chips of car glass from an accident next to a bus stop on Grove Road, Bow, Tower Hamlets, London.

It was my first time trying to use silver wire like this. I was hungover as hell, and they took about 2 hours to make, but if I did them again, it would would take much less time. Pretty pleased with the result, the safety glass really blings well – much brighter than I thought it would be.

These ones aren’t for sale, but I could make a new pair if you want, or even something different. Any ideas for the next pieces also welcome.

PS
I found the silversmithing course via the Tower Hamlets Learning Ladder scheme which is brilliant, has a range of courses in all kinds of different stuff, from cooking to languages, and cheap too – a 10 week course is £85, compared to fees of £400+ for doing it at a name like St Martins.

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For the past few months, I’ve been buying bits of old toys from car boot sales when I can. The point of all this was so I could create unique toy mashups – cutting off different bits of different toys and recombining them to make new cute stupid creatures.

Anyway I just finished the first one and gave it away for someone’s birthday.

unnamed idiotcreature_01

It’s made from these two, whom I found for about 20p each in a charity shop near Shadwell.

I cut them to bits with scalpel and painstakingly reassembled them using various glues and putties, then painted it using brush and aerosol. It took about 2 hours work (on and off) to make this one.

I’ll try make more soon. I want to do some plush ones too, but need more scraps of material and to learn to sew. I like how when I describe making it, the pronoun goes from “them” to “it” as they get combined.

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aerosols on hardboard, 120cm x 60cm

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My flatmate Stuart and some others from glue pioneered this technique of waving a mobile phone light around a subject whilst shooting on slow exposure. I don’t know what the name for this type of photography is, but it we all had fun shooting in our kitchen with Hal’s camera. More pics soon.

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48″ x 24″
aerosol on hardboard

Merry Xmas everybody

technorati tags:fish, aerosol, art, painting, chinese, traditional, urban, spray, red, white, pink, carp, thing

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The past couple of days I have been in a beautiful village outside London on a training course. It was a lot of fun, writing ads solidly for the whole 3 days. Anyway I guess the whole creative angst overcame me at some point and I vandalised my hotel room. Damn.

When I get a house, I will definitely get a safe behind a picture. Maybe the picture will be of a safe. Then I could just draw a safe behind it.

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