Art 1010 – Found Object Art Project

"Kitten Meow”
Alora North
07-23-2019

Art has always been an outlet for me in my life, I was never blessed with the coordination to play

sports or to dance. However throughout the years I have stayed with-in my comfort zone as far as

creativity goes. I stuck with what I knew and what I was good at, which was more oil painting
and drawing. Sculptures were a whole new concept for me. I was also pretty nervous about

creating my own from random objects because I pride myself on my art work even though it is

more in the “eye of the beholder”. Even though I was nervous about the outcome of this project,

I was still excited to try something new that could allow me to further my artistic abilities.

Starting the project was overwhelming at first but then things began to flow as I kept moving and

it became enjoyable. I had objects from my home that I could use but I also ended up going to a

thrift store to get more ideas on what to make. I found two coffee pots and stacked them together

and it reminded me of how my cat sits. I was able to start piecing things in my mind much better

and how to accomplish my sculpture. I also took two of my friends with me and it was fun to

play with random objects to see how they would fit together. Even my one friend who is not into

art at all had some really fun ideas. It was really cool to see how everyone thought and how they

pieced objects together in their mind.

For my cat sculpture I ended up using 144 forks for the fur , 2 glass coffee pots for the body, 2

large fork ends for the ears, 2 strainers for the face, another square strainer for the base, whisk

for whiskers. To hold everything together I used gorilla metal glue and duct tape. I use the tape

to hold the forks in place while the glue was drying. Then I used tiny rocks in the coffee pot for

the ends of the strainers so the head would stay in place. The glue was tricky because layering

the forks for the fur you would have to have the previous layer dry before the next layer or it

would all fall apart and you would have to start all over again. The glue also took a while to dry
even though it was supposed to be fast acting. I also had the same problem with the ears I had to

prop up the head and ears so they would dry in the right place and stay.

I didn't have a specific design for the cat, other than I wanted it to kinda look like my cat that is

really fat and fluffy so that's why I choose to have the forks rounded at the ends and not flattened

out to resemble her fluffy fur. I also envisioned it to be more “soft” even though it was hard and

metal forks the way it was positioned was important to have a smooth flow. It took a lot of

creative thinking to make everything work together and stay together, but it was really satisfying

to watch everything come together. The best way I can describe this whole experience would be

putting together a puzzle. You start with the corners and make your way in and everything starts

coming together.

I was able to appreciate the process more for those who mainly do sculptures because the process

for painting is (almost) the same every time but for creating something out of random objects it

is completely different every single time. Which is also another thing I enjoyed because it is easy

to get stuck on autopilot when you are used to doing the same medium over and over again. It

was frustrating at times because you want it your work to look good and show what you have

created in your mind. Even though it won't look exactly like how you envisioned it in your mind

sometimes it turns out better because things change and you think of a new way of how

something would fit in and then you can actually see how it looks.
In conclusion I really enjoyed how much freedom was given to what we made and how it was

made. I liked how we had to kinda figure it out on our own. Of course I knew help was available

if needed but I am use to teacher directing me and showing me step by step on how to complete

something. It was fun to experiment on my own figure out my own “puzzle”. I think it is a

project that should be implemented more often because in society we are so used to list and step

by step procedures that when we don't have that we kinda freeze and we don't know what to do.

Even if you are not an artistic person it is a good skill to be able to figure things out without step

by step rules. Once you allow yourself to take a step back and see what can work it is really

satisfying. I would do it again and I plan on implementing things like this in my artwork in the

future. Thank you for getting me out of my comfort zone and back into creative thinking.