EileenWCreations: Making an Assemblage

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Making an Assemblage

I thought I would give some information on the making of my bird assemblage for the New Life Art Project. I was allowed to select from bins of old musical instrument parts, and when I saw the violin body it looked immediately to me like a bird. Perhaps this is because I love birds, spend a lot of time watching them, and like to incorporate them into my work whenever possible. Or perhaps it just looked like a bird. You decide. Anyway, the next thing I saw was what I believe to be a key guard for a saxophone. That looked to me like the eyes and beak of bird too. So, there was no fighting it anymore, I was going to make a bird from these parts.

Step one is to gather together the musical instrument parts and other miscellaneous found objects I had on hand. The photo below shows the musical instrument parts I took. I ended up only using the violin body and key guard to the left of the violin. The other parts will have to wait for another idea to inspire me.

assemblage parts

Step two is to consult with my good friend Linda who is a genius with found object art. She helped me figure out what else I needed and then we were off to second hand stores. At the second hand store we found a spatula and grilling utensils that we thought could be feet and tail feathers, sea shells for wings, and a photo stand that would help to support the violin body. I also later picked up a vegetable steamer. That made for excellent tail feathers.

Here is a little bit of how I used these items:

The black shape shown below is the photo holder. It is in the shape of a person wearing a graduation gown and holding a diploma. It had three bent wires out of the top of it that you slid photos in to display. The wires were removed and used as top feathers on the head. It may have started its life as a present for a graduate, but it is now holding the violin body to the top of a cigar box.