Opus Twenty Two

This piece has been a fun collaboration of sources. Up until this piece every piece has had copper scrap (known as drop, this is the pieces left over after flat sheets of copper are cut for flashing. Drop is good for nothing more then being taken to the recycle yard.) in fact most of my pieces have been nothing more then drop. This piece is made out of vertical copper strands which came from a re-roof project Nielco is doing.

The owner planed on scraping all of the copper himself but I worked out a deal with him (I am going to build him an art piece and he is giving me the Valley metal) so now he will scrap out the rest of the copper but not the valley. The horizontal scarp came from a fellow artist I met through my association with Galerie Belle Ame. Her name is Amber Conger and she works in found and reclaimed object sculptures.

I went out to meet her and see her studio last Sunday and had an interesting conversation with her about working with what she called “thin stuff”  She said she did not like it and could not understand how I focused on sheet goods. the funny thing about the conversation was that I felt the same way about the “large” objects she likes to work with.

When we got out to her shop I noticed a 3 foot wide spool of stainless steel (about a hundred feet when you roll it out. I asked her about it and reminded her how strange it seemed in light of our conversation. She told me she had picked it up a few years ago and had two more. I guess she just could not find a use for it. I offered to buy it from her and brought the first one home with me that day. I am so exited about what I can do with this new material it opens up a huge number of possibilities. THANKS AMBER!