Hubcaps

The Landfill Art Project is a creative endeavor by artists all over the country and even internationally, to transform the lowly hubcap into a work of art. I found out about the project through my friend Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson (see her hubcap entry on her blog post, here) and decided to submit one myself. My hubcap, titled "Land, Ho," uses all repurposed materials, including a sweet little ship that my sister Barbara sent me a long time ago from a yard sale find. The bird is another of her finds: an enameled brooch. And so is the lighthouse, one of a collection of 10 or so from another yard sale. 

The picture below it is the "before" shot. I have to admit, the bump in the center threw me a bit at first (I'd never inspected a hubcap closely), but it finally worked itself out, as projects usually do!  I used plaster strips to cover the holes around the edges.

Visit the Landfill Art website for pictures of the hundreds of other submissions so far. There's nothing like reusing something that would usually be thrown away!

Mosaic for Charity

Last weekend I completed this mosaic to contribute to a project being organized by Eve Lynch of Kraken Mosaics in Fort Myers.  She put out a call for contributions of mosaics to include as part of the outdoor environment for the J.H. Messina Children's Center in Fort Myers. My inspiration was a particular species of crane - the black-crowned - but after finishing it I realized that it also could have come right out of a Dr. Seuss book.

Mosaics for charity is, of course, not a new concept. I recently learned of a nonprofit called Piece by Piece, which teaches disadvantaged adults to create mosaic works of art to sell for extra money. Their slogan is "Recycled art for a new cycle of life." They make the analogy that life itself is a process of putting together bits and pieces to make a whole person. The organization is headquartered in Long Beach, California, and some of the works being created are extraordinarily beautiful.