the dreaded tree

this is something i’ve been working on lately. i can’t say i’m remarkably pleased with it yet, but it isn’t finished. at my work, we go through a lot of bottles — and they happen to be really nice bottles. some of them i use as water bottles, but there’s simple too many to keep all of them. even so, i really don’t want to waste them. it’s such a sad sight each time one goes in the bin. i’ve considered making my own soft drinks with a Co2 charger, and filling the bottles with that. but that’s a later project. for now, the bottles are stacking up and i need to do something with them.

so that’s when i started gluing them together and pasting a motley of materials onto them in an attempt to create ‘art’. i’d like it to be usable in some way, but presently it’s a useless sculpture.

right now it’s clearly just a few bottles with rubbish strewn all about them. but when i’m finished, it will hopefully look more dignified — and with luck, also serve as a lamp. the trick is finding lights that will fit into the narrow bottle necks, and then creating a base for the whole thing. so until then.. this is it.

photos © alyx s

today i made a tea necklace and a new patch.

photos © alyx s

photos © alyx s

Something I regarded as important, a logical and stewardly concept;
but did I do it? Not really.

I want to learn to utilise as much as possible without becoming a hoarder. I thought I’d start with what I know how to use. If I buy a roasted chicken, I should eat the meat and save its bones and cook whatever is left on the carcass in a pot to make stew. Melon rinds can be made into art and flowers and plants can be dried just before wilting and kept as decoration. If I had chickens I would feed them other food rinds, but unfortunately I don’t. Unneeded tins and pots can be decorated and sold, or you can donate them to charity shops or even just use them (things become liked a lot better once you make them into art).

These bones are going to be made into wind chimes. The ones on the left still need to be brushed/sanded.

These melon rinds are drying and once they’re dry I’m going to sew them together. I haven’t quite decided what the final product will be.

These flowers are drying and once they are dry they will go in those pots.

This is leftover bread that broken up and left out to dry (the film is only set lightly across the bread to keep other stuff from falling in). After it’s dry, I make it into bread pudding loafs — a perfect solution to prevent leftover bread from moulding that actually tastes better than the bread did in the first place.

This would be my biggest project… It’s what used to be an organ that I found at the side of the road. I intend to make it some sort of “found art”.

For now, it’s just plaguing me.

photos © alyx s