Wire sculpture. 

Artists statement.

The inspiration behind this piece was a stuffed animal I got in Europe. I had to choose an object to make a wire sculpture of, and I knew I wanted to do this bunny very quickly. It was the perfect size and is something special to me. I questioned the struggle of making the limbs as I knew it may be hard to attach, but I thought it would be a good experience to challenge myself. 

The materials used for this project were 18 gauge annealed wire, wire cutters, and needle nose pliers. 

Before I began on the sculpture, I practiced by doing the wire chain tower and cube. The tower went great... but the cube, not so much. I struggled to find how to get the fish hooks to clamp fully and stay secure. After some struggle and redoing, I finally got a standing cube. Then, I started on my bunny. I looked at the shaping and "cut" it into sections. I made different-sized circles for the body and connected them with small bent pieces of wire. Then, I used the pliers to bend the wire into the shape of the leg. I then bent small semi-circles to add the 3-D/dimension to each leg. I ran into an issue when it came time to attach the legs because I did not leave enough room on the ends to get a full, rounded fish hook. I learned from this when it came to attaching the ears and arms, which I did next. Then, I moved onto the head. I repeated the process of the legs where I bent the wire into the side-profile shape, and then added curved wire pieces to each side to make it 3-D. This worked well for me to visualize my bunny into pieces of wire. Finally, I added the final touch of using the thin copper wire to recreate the nose and mouth of my bunny. I learned a lot about working with wire and fish hook techniques in this project. It was definitely not easy for me and a material/technique that I struggled with, but at the end, I felt much more comfortable with it and my final product came out how I wanted it.