ART 1010

Found Object Art Project

“Slinkydogg”

Tarren Gomez

7/12/2023
When I first saw this project I thought it would be pretty simple. However, as I started to

look around my house, and find objects that might resemble a face, body, or a

prominent animal or insect feature, I came across the real adversary. As soon as I

would find one piece I would try to build around it, then I would find the following pieces

even more difficult not only to find, but to add to one another. Sometimes I would get

frustrated and lose the creative spark I had going, which would lead me to taking a

break and trying again the next day. At first I was trying to look for animals or people in

objects, walking around trying to use my artist's “eye”. This was useless as I spent most

of my time aimlessly wandering the house digging up old boxes full of trinkets and

seasonal decor. Then I thought it ought to be worth it to try and think of an animal and

create it. Having something to start with will make it easier for me to find helpful objects

and put them together.

So I came up with an owl. I don’t have any particular interest in owls. Not really even too

sure I’m truly fond of the birds, it is a bit creepy how they can rotate their necks a full

180 degrees and look back with giant open eyes. Except I must say they do have sleek

appearance and mysterious appeal, the silent night aerialist. The only encounter I’ve

truly had with an owl was a few years ago when one was living probably on my roof and

would “HOOOO” “HOOOOO” in the darkest hours of the night and early morning. It was

quite the burden, and my entire family can recall the tortuous event which finally only

subsided once the owl decided to take another family elsewhere hostage. So the owl it

is. I thought about using these slinky looking things that are in the garage as legs,

because they are pretty tall and seem like a good fit. The problem was they didn’t
balance very well upright, and it was also really hard to get other objects that would be

the body to adhere on top of them evenly. The lids, pans, pots, shovel, I think at some

point a bucket, would all eventually leave me defeated as I wasn’t able to get them to fit

together.

One night I was with my younger brother. I thought who is more creative in the world

than a 7 year old boy full of wonderment and youtube shorts content. So I told him I was

working on building any type of animal and it could be made of anything. He literally

jumped at the idea and said he could make a raptor from Jurassic World. I thought that

was a pretty intricate design and build until 20 minutes later he came downstairs with a

lego raptor. I explained that he would have gotten an F because he didn’t follow the

rubric (kidding), I told him awesome job and we began to watch Toy Story. It was during

this movie franchise that I saw the Slinky dog and then I finally knew what those were

meant to be. The exact reason they had been built, then transported to some type of

Pier 1 imports of the like, and crossed paths with me to become the “Slinkydogg”.

I decided I would use those as the main body, and have it sort of alligator style instead

of standing tall. Good riddance to the owl that had exhausted my mind once again. The

“Slinkydogg” was going to change the world. I felt like I had a solidified foundation at this

point. When it came to the legs I felt like I had many different options of objects that

would suffice. But I found some forks that worked and I thought they resembled paws.

The head, nose, and ears I thought would need to go together first, and then the head

could move to the body. To meet the measurement requirements I had to combine both
slinks into one long one and intertwine them together. This created an uneven

distribution of weight which caused it to sag in the middle where there was no support to

bear that weight. I tried using different methods of distributing the legs around, and

using different utensils as legs. I found that when “Slinkydogg” is on grass or any

substrate where the paws (forks) can be driven into the dirt will create enough support

to balance, however when “Slinkydogg” is on a substrate that the forks cannot work

their way into like hardwood, granite, pavers etc. it doesn’t balance well.

To accommodate for this I used toilet rolls as a base for when it's standing on a hard

surface. The head was a lid, the eyes were caps, empty toilet roll for the snout, and the

tongue I must admit I stole from one of the previous examples where someone had

used a sock as a tongue and I could not resist. It completed the “Slinkydogg” image to

perfection!

I had lots of fun with this project. It kept me on my toes and helped me become very

adaptable. As it was coming together and I found more and more objects that would

make good use, I would run into issues where the object I had in mind wasn't

accessible, the right size, or weight to fit together. As frustrating as it was at some

points in the process it paid off in the end. Probably the biggest obstacle I had to

overcome was I heavily relied on using the hot glue gun to adhere objects together.

However, I quickly came to the understanding that my younger sister had taken the

entire box set and it was nowhere to be found along with her (she's vacationing in

Florida). So I had to come up with other ideas to get my objects to adhere. It all worked
out and I hope everyone had a good experience with the project, can't wait to see some

of your creations!