Artist, Musician, and Maker Ken Butler
Artist, musician and maker Ken Butler plays his found object hybrid instruments at World Maker Faire NY. Watch ’till the end for a mind blowing performance on a piece of latex dental dam.
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junk art
Life Size Junk Mammoth
Junk artist extraordinaire Jud Turner is an old favorite here at MAKE. He’s just moved into a bigger studio and completed his largest piece, ever—a life-size Columbian Mammoth skeleton made from “95% recycled materilas, mostly old farm equipment and agricultural tools.” He’s also posted some cool work-in-progress shots here. [Thanks, Jud!]
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Articulated Street Sign Armor Plates
Cool postapocalyptic cosplay from Bellingham, Washington craftsman Ivan Owen. The roadsigns, he assures us, were “obtained through legal means,” and were formed into plates by peening against an anvil, before being affixed to a harness made from belts.
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Scrap Tanker Car Becomes Giant Steel Mantis
Bill Secunda’s sculpture “Mantis Dreaming” was inspired by The Verve’s song “Catching The Butterfly.” Of it, he writes: “I imagined a praying mantis might have that dream, his opposite, the butterfly, beautiful, delicate, and always out of reach. He is so infatuated with it, when the butterfly lands on him he stands frozen. His instincts clash with his fascination, all he can do is hope it doesn’t fly away.”
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Nested Plastic Bottle Caps Give Mosaic Rich Color Palette
As impressive as this bottle-cap self-portrait from artist Mary Ellen Croteau may be, I probably would not have chosen to mention her piece “CLOSE,” here, if it weren’t for the interesting way that she has used sets of nested plastic bottle caps and bottle-cap liners to achieve a much deeper color palette than would’ve been possible using bottle caps without the nesting trick. Clever!
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Heart-Shaped Wine Cork Trivet, with Gradient Stains
Lately I’ve taken to finding morals in the stuff I post. Last time it was radically limiting your options to inspire more creative thinking. Today, I think, the lesson of this simple-but-striking assemblage is about paying close attention to your starting material. What features does it already have, when you walk up on it, that you can exploit?
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Tiny Intricate Paperclip Weapons
If I may wax pedantic for a moment, here’s a rather striking example of the remarkable creativity that can result from radically limiting one’s options. “What is the coolest thing I make using all the myriad resources available in the world?” may be a stultifying proposition, but picking something ready to hand (“What is the coolest thing I can make from just this pile of paperclips?”) is a more manageable and, in my opinion, often a more interesting and enjoyable process.
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