"Oh, isn't she sweet" said the nice lady in the charity shop. "She's really ugly. I'm going to pull her head off, cut off her hair and draw all over her face", I replied.
I'm a human magpie. I'm always picking up treasures - AKA things most people call rubbish - and using them to make art.
Before I stared creating these artworks I had a chest of drawers full of small, interesting items but no idea what to do with them. Here are just a few of the 3d 'curiosities' I've made using found objects, unwanted stuff, broken things, nasty things, and bits of rubbish.
Making something out of nothing
I stuck the horrid doll head at the top of this post onto the body of a £5 plastic bird skeleton from Poundland, drawing on the face with biro to make it spookier. Then I stuffed the rib cage with moss and sticks before wiring the finished thing to our gatepost. Because these things sometimes evolve as new ideas come to me, I've just given it red eyes to make it more disturbing.
Bringing a creepy bird man to life
The bird monster above was inspired by two scary hand-made resin heads from a charity shop. The body is crumpled newspaper covered in papier mache, with glued-on feathers found in the garden.
The legs are rabbit bones wired together then painted, and the feet are fashioned from pipe cleaners wound with dusty old cotton thread. The snotty dangles are UHU glue, the best glue for creating snotty dangles!
Bashing old cutlery flat with a hammer
I set Eating alfresco in the cutlery forest inside a 45cm wooden box lined with mirror tiles. The forest floor is the bouncy dyed moss used to make trees and bushes in model railways, studded with faux flowers and surrounded by hammered cutlery and peacock feather woodland.
Take it from me, bashing cutlery flat with a lump hammer is oddly satisfying!
I added a painted doll's house table and chairs, plus tiny weeny glasses, wine and cutlery, and made some poisonous looking plasticine food. The drunken bird like figures have wire forms inside, covered with cotton bandage to create little mummies, and their gloves and boots are made from plasticine.
Their heads are blackbird skulls and their eyes are glass, used in taxidermy. Miniature human skulls litter the ground around the festivities. An LED lighting strip completes the drama, giving it an eerie glow after dark.
Giving The Collector treasures to look after
This is The Collector, made from a felted wool ball with painted wasp decor and an old doll head. The legless body sits in a leathery plasticine hammock, dangling from the roof, and the long, spindly arms and hands are plasticine connected by picture wire. He hangs from the ceiling of a richly-decorated box, covered with the backs and fronts of posh notebooks.
The figure is surrounded by interesting bits and bobs: an Inuit carved bird, a Victorian toy mouse, a rabbit skull, a festive bauble, a tiny cut crystal vase, a mummified frog, a 9 carat gold Art Nouveau pendant set with rubies, a doll's house chandelier and more. The Perspex door opens and shuts with a decorative bead, and the box stands on four lilac cut glass feet.
My fellow hoarder of weird sh*t
Friends of ours bought an acre of East Sussex woodland. On one visit I found a fabulous midden hidden in the undergrowth and dug up all sorts of treasures. Adding a load more cool things I had hanging around at home, I made this curiosity inside a 30cm Perspex cube.
It's called The Hoarder. The star of the show is a figure with a hedgehog skull head, a mummy-like wired body covered in open-weave medical bandages, butterfly wings and glass eyes. He's sitting in a nest made from half a copper ballcock from an old loo, balanced on top of a large animal leg bone. A vintage French papier mache spider watches over his treasures.
A perilous journey
This one's called It was a perilous journey across the choppy seas of time, where she waited for him. Many before him had perished attempting it. He ploughed ahead with exhilarating speed.
I found the desiccated rat in a box on a stall at Brighton Marina boot fair. The dealer wanted 50p for it - bargain! My friend Cheryl gave me the ceramic fish, originally shiny grey and once belonging to her nana. I've added an old Amp meter, dead moths and dragonflies, vintage watch faces and watch parts. The figure is a 1920s cloth sailor doll, found in a junk shop.
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