Friday, October 23, 2009

Buttons and More Buttons


I never thought about using buttons in my art until a couple of years ago when my friend Lynn offered me a big bag of them. She had been cleaning out her own studio and knew she was never going to use them. I am very bad at passing up free art supplies, especially shiny, brightly colored art supplies. So I used a few immediately in a mosaic and then forgot about them for over a year.

I only thought of using them again when I was making a large wire bird sculpture for a show this last summer. My Big Tweet sold right away and I decided this could be a good direction for my sculpture.
But the buttons started to run out fairly quickly when I expanded into my Raven Meets Crow shop and started making a lot of wire sculptures. So I turned to the source most reliable for bizarre, out of the ordinary objects: Ebay.

12 pounds of buttons. Around 6000 pieces. Who would have ever thought that you could order such a large selection at once? Unfortunately, I had to clean them because they were slightly greasy and had a musty, funky sort of smell. Maybe that is just vintage plastic aroma, who knows. But now they are clean and the colors separated, ready for me to start crackin' on some new work.

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