Assemblage Sculpture

The idea of this project was to create a sculpture out of reused or found material, such as those left around the classroom or at home. For these guidelines, I decided to create a bee using the most available resource from my home, recycled cans. Before creating the actual sculpture we all created an armature of our animal (mine a bee) and then added materials to the armature to create our final piece.

I used newspaper and tape for the armature because it was flexible and easily manipulated. I used cans, wire, and a paper towel because paper towel and wire can easily be bent which helped make the wings. I used cans because I always like the idea of art made from recycled cans and it took a lot of time to bend and cut up. I also added pieces of black fabric for the face that I found from old scraps in the art room.

The biggest challenge I faced when creating my assemblage was the cans and the process of cutting them. First off I didn't have time to wash out twenty cans every day so I would have to clean up the liquid inside of the can once I cut them open. Also, the cans can be quite loud when cutting open, almost like nails on a chalkboard even and that made me procrastinate the cutting process altogether. The biggest problem though was that once the pieces were all cut up the can strips just lay flat and didn't create the texture I was hoping for. To fix this issue I bent each piece of can at a 120-degree angle so the cans pieces could lay ontop of each other and create the texture I was looking for.