Seeing Possibilities in Junk

Spring cleaning involves scrubbing and sweeping away wintry stains, cobwebs, and dust. Outside the house it means raking wilted plantings and scouring patios and decks. Those now clean, fresh surfaces provide an artist’s canvas, inviting expression that can involve simply rearranging possessions or painting, constructing, and welding efforts.

Inside the house, this might involve moving furniture or adding bright pillows and throws. Outside, the possibilities are endless. One so inclined might use pallets to construct upright gardens that grow along a fence or garage wall or outdoor forts and furniture. Those who love funky yard art might head for the scrap heap to find broken down metal pieces that lend themselves to new lives as flywheel-bodied birds and insects with plier head ornaments, harrow tailed beasts, or disc and rebar mammals.

Waste not, want not is the mantra for folks who recognize a dolphin, stallion, or buffalo sculpture in a pile of rusty nuts, bolts, and gears. You can’t help but admire these creative spirits for both their vision and their skillset. Holy cow, they visualize a final product and then weld it out of what others tossed in the trash pile.

Think about possibilities waiting to be born from scrap heaps in garages, barns, and at the junk dealer’s. Old tractor seats wait to find a new life as a critter or a crazy looking picnic stool. Gazillions of metal knobs, faucets, and handles oxidize in isolation until inventive sorts spy them and reimagine them as garden fountains, coat racks, or google eyes on a dragon.

One young welder I know sees possibility in just about anything. He can take garage sale or auction- found plumbing pipes and turn them into high-end embellishments. I particularly like the innovative lamps he makes. If he gets tired of his day job, he could make a living selling his one of a kind furnishings and light fixtures.

In addition to scoping out creative neighbors, a stop at area flea markets or the Kansas Store on I-70 offers potential buyers and craftspeople a chance to see welded art creatures first hand. As a result of such adventures, my brother’s backyard now sports a tractor-seat-bodied and tailed strutting turkey. Who knows what discarded parts form its wattle. A welded grasshopper made of once useless implement parts guards mom’s roses. A heavy bodied woodpecker constructed from old plates, gears, and wheels climbs her trellis. A roadrunner made of soldered spikes oversees her dining room. My own collection includes a heavy-duty rooster, long-legged heron with leaf rake tail, and rusty armadillo formed from bits of rebar.

My husband recently bought a welder so once I find a source for metal, our menagerie will expand. Unlike living pets, these repurposed ones don’t require food or cleaning up poop. Besides, flying pigs and unicorn frogs exist in this world.

As you spring clean and find odd piles of metal or wood, consider the possibilities. How can you recycle junk into yard art that entertains you and visitors who happen to spot your creations? It’s not like we don’t have a model for grassroots art in nearby Lucas, Kansas.

Creativity Doesn’t Have Age Limits

After my juniors finished a unit over Native American creation stories, I challenged the class to create their own worlds and write narratives explaining their inventions. I never get tired of seeing what teenagers come up with and how they share it. After some deep thinking, one young woman focused on her love of movies. Another developed a tale based on her love of farming while several young men put together stories centered on the outdoors or sports. These youngsters’ efforts made me think about what realm I’d produce given the opportunity.

At the time my students were working on their projects, I enrolled in a Joy of Painting class at the Dane G. Hansen Museum. This particular course provides a pre-selected subject for the artwork. Using various brushes and paints, each artist chooses how to develop his or her own piece. If there are 30 artists in a class, there are 30 different paintings.

When I first arrived, I examined the teacher’s model of that day’s subject, a huge whitetail. I was eager to learn to paint a big buck surrounded by pines and dark, cloudy skies, but I noted a few details I wanted to tweak. I visited with the instructor to be sure my changes were something I could manage without taking more time than the class allotted. When she gave the go ahead, my brain went into overdrive considering what I needed to do to make this painting mine—in essence to do what I’d charged my students to do-- to create my own world.

That is what artists get to do. Writers, musicians, sculptors, painters, movie makers, photographers, and other creators take charge, for a little while at least, to produce an existence of their own making. For that instant, an individual gets to pick words, rhythms, mediums, color, characters, and other details necessary to manufacture something unique to that spirit. If an artist is lucky, his or her creation will connect someone else’s spirit, and he or she’ll get to enjoy a moment of appreciation.

We live in a world that seems to me to get further and further away from individuals creating. We enjoy other folks’ constructions—video games, movies, and music, but it doesn’t seem that we are active participants in actually creating a finished product. Maybe I’m longing for something that never really existed, but when I listen to elders’ stories or read books about the good ol’ days, one thing folks did together was create. 

If there was a gathering, anyone who could play an instrument joined in a little impromptu music making. Women gathered to construct beautiful quilts out of leftover scraps, and communities put on plays and declamations. People didn’t think they needed lots of classes before they were willing to participate in something like sewing, painting, or playing an instrument.

Young or old, it’s good to create. It’s necessary to encourage youngsters and grownups to dabble in imaginative endeavors from making radishes into roses and creating sculpture from spaghetti and marshmallows to painting and playing instruments. Getting older shouldn’t inhibit people from making new worlds. Creativity doesn’t have age limits. Look at Grandma Moses.

Barbie’s Bouquet Ready for Pickin’

Only a Grinch could hate spring’s arrival. What’s not to like about warmer days, leaves unfurling, grass greening, tulips and daffodils bursting into bloom, lilacs perfuming breezes, and white blossoms exploding on Barbie’s wedding bush. This plant is really called spirea, but for little girls playing dolls, this shrub provides bouquets enough for a hundred wedding ceremonies--hence its nickname.

I hope cascading branches loaded with clusters of tiny white blossoms still trigger little girls’ imaginations. When I was a seven-year-old, the moment our neighbor’s huge bush exploded into a frothy, white wall of flowers, I began constructing bridal clothing for three Barbie dolls and their redheaded friend Midge. 

My mom’s ragbag wasn’t safe. If we’d had paper towels or napkins back then, I’d have used them as well. Ones that come in tidy squares would’ve served this wanna-be wedding designer perfectly to make stunning one-use outfits. Without the availability of handy paper products, I creatively turned worn out washcloths, tea towels, hankies, and leftover fabric into long trained gowns and flowing veils. If I could’ve used mom’s nice fabric remnants, those outfits would’ve dazzled kings and queens. However, I knew better than to get into her good stuff.

As it was, I snagged onto any piece of cloth big enough I could use a needle and thread to turn it into a gathered skirt with my gigantic, looping stitches. Once I completed my dolls’ dresses, I looked for filmy material to turn into lovely headpieces and extensions that trailed behind plastic brides and attendants. Sometimes the best option involved toilet paper. It romantically floated behind the bride as she walked to meet her groom.

Nowadays, little girls accustomed to buying couture fashions off the internet for their Mattel fashion toys would turn their noses up at a bride going down the aisle in a terry cloth skirt and a TP veil. However, fifty years ago was a simpler time, and my friends and I thought the ensembles we painstakingly created were elegant.

The highlight was the bouquet. In my neighborhood, at least one resident grew a big, old spirea bush. He or she would permit polite little girls to fill pockets or pulled out shirt bottoms with miniature nosegays that once ornamented those flowing stems.

I suspect that one of the reasons May and June originally became popular wedding months had to do with the availability of beautiful spirea sprays brides could carry on their march to the altar. Who needs a florist when nature provides so richly? 

Once our Barbie’s wedding attire was completed to our satisfaction, we’d tuck perfectly sized nosegays into our dolls’ tiny hands to complete the effect. Back in our bedrooms, we’d create a lovely chapel with a colorful ribbon to guide Barbie and her groom to the front of our little sanctuary. Along the way, we’d strew left over flowerets from the tiny bouquets. Each Barbie’s perfectly round bridal arrangement must have dazzled her handsome groom almost as much as her designer gown and creative veil did.

Homemade dresses and seasonal spirea sprays made for many lovely spring weddings. It’s too bad there was only one Ken and that he had to marry each Barbie in a separate ceremony. At least his tiny boutonniere matched each of his brides’ perfect bouquets. No paid florist could have done a better job.