Julie Levesque

"Table for Seven - salt, sugar cubes, wood, dinnerware & paint 48"x 20"x14". 7 of each - forks, knives, spoons, plates, cups bowls are encrusted in multiple layers of salt and the table top is inlayed with sugarcubes.

BZ Burnbridge

Peace Cranes in strings made from recycled glossy magazines! Sent out around the world, to ripple support for PeaceNow, EndWar Imagione Peace Campaigns. Follow us at @CosmoCorps

Simon Friedman

The ramblings remain the same from my prior submission. Just reformatted the pic to improve visibility.

Simon Friedman

The year was 1996, and I was living in the inner sunset neighborhood of San Francisco in an apartment where I could hear the rats fighting in the walls as I tried to fall asleep each night. Unfortunately, this is not hyperbole, though it is fun to talk about in retrospect. In addition to the noise the rats were making, I was also kept awake by thoughts of doom. I had no idea how I was going to finish the writing of my Ph.D. thesis which I was in the process of slogging through (on rational drug design). My routine each morning, after I awoke in pure panic, was to put on sweat pants and go to the corner coffee shop to get a 16 ounce coffee. The thesis writing procrastination process was thus initiated. At some point, sitting in my room, staring at my notes, I started doodling on my empty coffee cup. After doing this a few days running, I decided to challenge myself, and see how many different ways I could write “coffee” or some type of decoration on this standard paper cup after I drank the contents. As the days went by, I became more sophisticated, making up a set of two simple rules: 1) The cup had to be completed in the day it was purchased. 2) The decoration had to be made using items I could find in my apartment (no trips to Utrecht). This lead me to utilize pen, pencil, highlighter, a lighter, a push pin, wax, salt, rubbing alcohol, food coloring, aquafresh, rubber bands, coffee itself, razor blades and a strawberry. I found myself each day waking up excited to see if I could come up with a new way of altering the deceptively simple form. As the days went by, I recognized themes emerging: First it was pen, then other writing instruments, then cutting was introduced. With each new idea, iterations could be developed. So once I came up with the cutting idea, many possible ways of exploring that theme could be examined. These ideas could be “over-explored” and the resulting iteration thus became stale. Then came the “hybridization” state, where large themes were interwoven, i.e. the cutting/sculptural approach married with the drawing approach. I started to see my coffee cup “project” as a manifestation of the dynamics of the process of creativity itself, though this was secondary to the simple pleasure I got each day from the act of creation, and of avoiding writing my thesis. Ultimately I finished my thesis, graduated and packed a UHaul for LA, where I was heading for a postdoc. The cups ended up in a Bay Area land fill but not before snapping some pics. In retrospect I like to think this was my final “artiste’s” statement regarding the act of creation: that ultimately all artist’s creations, as well as artists themselves, will eventually be subsumed into the earth. In fact, there just wasn’t room in the UHaul for three Xerox boxes full of marked up and used coffee cups.

Leslie Hirst

I am a visual artist. I began creating these paintings as the result of my habit of collecting four-leaved clovers during my daily long distance runs, which then became a record of my movement through the environment. After collecting, pressing and drying hundreds upon thousands of four-leaved clovers, I map out a design with the clovers and embed them within layers of epoxy resin and painted imagery. This composition contains 1024 four-leaved clovers, arranged by size and shape, which are specific to a particular location. I have made four similar works, each with 1024 four-leaved clovers, and each specific to a different location. In addition, I have created numerous smaller works to accommodate my endless supply of clovers.

Kelly Jones

I make elegant jewelry out of hardware parts, and I love to hear all the reasons people are drawn to it: engineers who like the secret chuckle of wearing the materials they work with, chainmaillers who enjoy the way non-traditional materials are incorporated, and people who love the industrial design, or how unusual it is, or that it has a story.

I make the jewelry, but it goes on to make its own conversations and stories. Which I love! (Other styles can be seen at wraptillion.com, if you're curious.)

S. Fierston

Challenge: how to teach students about line without using traditional drawing materials.

Outcome: I tested three types and gauges of wire as I sculpted a printer's brayer. My criteria for choosing a wire was based on how malleable the wire was and on how cheap it was per foot.

I made the silvery sculpture out of soldering wire. What a luscious, thick line! But, it was the most expensive per foot and it sagged because it was made mostly of lead.

The little dark sculpture was made of Bonsai wire--aluminum, and less than .50 per foot. It was easy to work. The dark copper color of the wire made for a dramatic line.

Florist's steel wire (lowest sculpture) held its shape perfectly. It was the cheapest, too, and it made the finest line, one that was as expressive as a mechanical pencil. But it was difficult, very difficult to work--steel doesn't like to bend.

I went with the Bonsai wire.

Esther E. Randall

This image comes from a series of digital images of imaginary landscapes. I got the idea for this series by patterns made by coffee grounds left at the bottom of my cup; it struck me that the lines and shapes they left looked very much like Asian painting. I combined photographs of the grounds to create veiled strata culminating in a spatial statement. I started calling them sCapes because they were based upon coffee and also as a pun on ‘C’ referring to the act of "seeing."

Don Myhre

I laser scanned an Aphrodite sculpture from a museum's collection and printed the data using a rapid prototyper. From the 3d print I made a mold and cast a paper version using a "pulped" Vouge magazine.

Carrina Lau

I'm submitting this entry on behalf of my friend, with her permission. She created a very nice dress, in a very short time, from two materials (newspaper and masking tape).

mary buttram

After making bracelets out of old LP records, I just couldn't get rid of the scraps so I reheated, twisted and turn and this is the sculpture I ended up with. I call it 'Black Rosetta'. I love repurposing things most people would throw away.

George j Reitbauer

Material Mashing:
While listening to your show on NPR, the broadcast titled “Material Mashing” struck a cord for me. I teach art and create assemblages in my studio. I stress to my students that creativity is frequently simply a matter of letting go and being open to your environment and the action of play is part of my means to the ends.

My Example:
One fall day, I was using my mechanical tree trimmer in my back yard. The trimmer is the kind of mechanical device on a long pole, where you pull the rope and it cuts the branch. I noticed a squirrel up in the tree; it was busy trying to open a black walnut. I realized we were both using a jaw of sorts! This was inspirational for me, “a bio-mechanical jaw” moment! I scaled up the tree trimmer mechanics for my design, found some large pig teeth in my studio, and along with some clay and assorted found objects, created a working mashed-together Nutcracker. I don't know if it's fantastic, but it was definitely a “Spark” moment for me!

Gary Cassidy

My family and I regularly listen to Studio 360 and today I heard about sending photos of something we had created to NPR's studio 360 with a chance to win a copy of Spark when it comes out.

My Background:

Retired Army Special Forces Colonel and former Army Artist 1968 - 1999.
Education - Doctor of Arts George Mason University, Fairfax Virginia 2002, Master of Fine Arts Claremont Graduate School, Claremont California 1984, Bachelor of Fine Arts Washington University, St. Louis Missouri 1982.

The attached photos, taken by my son Brendan are of something that he and I built in our front yard here in Prescott Arizona. I call it a Linear Sculpture because it is neither a wall nor a fence. It is made of granite and quartz boulders/stone that were moved from around our yard and cemented into place. The wood was mostly a gift from a Retired Army friend's friend who owns a small sawmill in northwestern Arkansas. He's been cutting hardwoods for over thirty years and gave me most of the lumber because it was not furniture grade, it was taking up space in his lumberyard and he said that he knew that I would make something interesting out of it. The lumber used in this Linear Sculpture consists of, Walnut, four different kinds of Oak including one from our own backyard that had died, Elm, Cherry, Maple, and Osage Orange. The wood is covered with several coats of Spar Urethane. The steel was acquired from local scrap sources. The Linear Sculpture is seven feet high, a little over forty feet long and sets not in the ground, but on the ground like the Watts Towers built by Simon Rodia in 1957. I refer to this particular kind of art as art for art's sake.

Folks seem to like my Linear Sculpture as I've talked to several passersby who have asked questions about it, favorably commented on it, and have brought their friends by to see it. Having built the Linear Sculpture has led to my meeting a lot of local citizens and being appointed to the Board of Directors of Yavapai College's Outdoor Sculpture Garden on which I have served for the past year.

Thanks,

Gary Cassidy
Colonel, USA (Retired)

George Shumar Jr

This chair (I'm referring to as Louie Louie the 16th) was made of corrugated cardboard from the dumpster and covered with old drapes, and piped in denim from old jeans.

Christian Cantrell

I've never lost my love of toys, so I recently decided to work on a photography project I've had in the back of my mind for a couple of years now. The goal of the project is to tell stories -- some sad, some inspirational, some quirky, and some admittedly immature -- using nothing but toys, and in particular, Legos. Legos present an excellent challenge in terms of creativity because they are so constrained (limited movement, facial expressions, accessories, etc.), and they are so difficult to wring real human emotion out of.

What I love most about using Legos to tell stories is that you can really only hint at the actual story you're trying to tell, and the rest must take place in the viewers mind. This picture is from a series called "Scrapbook of a Stormtrooper" which I particularly like because stormtroopers are portrayed in Star Wars movies as being almost inhumanly unemotional, and don't even have facial expressions that we can connect and identify with. The goal of this series was to get as much emotion, personality, and character out of two blank-faced pieces of plastic as humanly possible.

The full series can be seen here:
http://www.microkosmic.com/comic/scrapbook-of-a-stormtrooper.html

Marti McGinnis

My dog, JoJo, developed a habit of licking out and then artfully biting empty cat food cans. I started collecting them and after a couple of years I realized JoJo had enough material to not only mount a show of his work ut also co-author a book based on his motivations. So this past summer he and I went to an Artist's retreat in Michigan and co-authored his book "CANS: The Life's Work of an Optimistic Dog". It has over 60 of Jo's sculptures in it as well as descriptions of his creative process and how we came to understand this dog is an artist. All from the humble beginnings of a Very persistent canine artist and a bunch of cat food cans. More info is available here: http://happyart.martimcginnis.com/other-projects/jojos-cans/

Melissa Rae Gagnon

Yesterday i made a dog out of an ink jar and a pile of screws.

Mark Chason

I was moving things behind my house, looking at the icycles coming down from the roof, when the idea struck me to take some down and put them in the snow in front of the house to create an ice sculpture, and people something to smile about in this stormy snowy time. I tried to "fuse" pieces together with a torch, and cold water, etc,. I ended up making a sort of "ice forest".I put a light behind it to show through the ice. The next time weather allows, I plan to add 5' columns (8" diameter) of ice in a sculputer around the forest. We got a lot of smiles!

Stefan D-W

Off-Ramp Hamlet:
Last fall I organized a group of people to do a production of Hamlet using the performance methods of roadside beggars. For each act we created one sentence of about seven words that attempted to cut to the essence of that act. We then wrote the sentences on pieces of cardboard for the text of the play. These signs were accompanied by others that introduced the act and character and the production itself. We then stood alongside Spokane's Division St. I-90 off-ramp during the morning rush hour holding the signs--one act each day of a week.
It wasn't Shakespeare but it might have been theatre, at least occasionally. It definitely stirred the commuters and we plan to produce Romeo and Juliet once the weather permits.
(photo by Chris Wooley)

Studio 360

We were inspired by Sarah Tisdale's savory take on a Valentine's Day bouquet using blooms of bacon.

(Sarah came in First Place in last year's Valentine's Day makeover challenge.)