Of "Fly free" and Other Works of Art

"Fly Free" is a lovely mixed media piece created by Shelley of Single Stone Studios. I know any you who have been reading my blog have seen me mention Shelley lots and lots of times. She has been a wonderful encouragement and "sounding board" for my work. So I was really excited when she requested a wire birdcage and some of my new wire words. Even more excited when I saw what she was doing with the pieces. She began by altering the birdcage by rounding it out and then embellishing it. I just LOVE the results. She used bits and pieces of things and it really made the wire form more interesting to see and it starts to tell a story (you can see more about this piece on Shelley's blog).

So it got me thinking and I started to see some of my wire sculptures as armatures or a framework to be embellished. Last winter one of my first sculpture pieces was this heart with wings. I actually created my scribble heart for this piece. It's still one of my all-time favorites and has the added glow for me of having been featured in the Sew Somerset of Winter '09. Yay! My first published work. So early on I started to play with this sort of embellishing but somehow dropped it in favor of other project ideas. Watching Shelley change my work and run with it made me want to pick up that direction again and see where it could go. Buttons, twine, lace, found objects, beads, old keys... the ideas for embellishing just go on and on.

So yesterday having a bit of time on my hands I played around with one of my little scribble hearts again and approached it with that blank canvas attitude. I wired on buttons, tied on fabric scraps, and added some string as well. I had a little red man game piece wired in too but Jasper informed me that this was his ketchup man and I couldn't have him. So he got cut out (escape!). Then because I loved it so much in my first sculpture I added a color pencil to pierce it. It's rigid horizontal line just seems to be the perfect contrast piece to the rest of the sculpture's scribbly organic lines. Playing around with this heart was a fun way to revisit the first piece and yet try some new things. But I'd like to keep going with it. I'd also like to know what you would do with one of these. If anyone reading this could pipe in with what they'd choose to include I'd love to hear it! Thanks as always for reading!
Jen