Foxfires Music Box

If you don't FULL VIEW - I'm going to withold the cupcakes, and call you silly names.

Assem-blage. It's a word I became very familiar with at ArtFest 09! I was fortunate enough to be able to take Michael deMeng's ( [link] ) class called "What a Relief", which centered on learning how to take 'assem-blage' to a whole new level.

Leading up to ArtFest, I had gathered all sorts of bits and bobs, not really having one particular thing in mind for this class. I collected frames, keys, wire, tiny plastic toys, an antique tintype, a cool brass fox head, wax my grandmother used to seal letters with, dice from my grandfather, foreign coins, a raw music-box that plays Unchained Melody, and the list goes on and on. I purchased things at the art store that I had never had occasion to use: Apoxie Clay, E6000 adhesive, interference color acrylics.

Over the course of 6 hours, we began to see collage as something other than flat surface, 2D art. We began building our assembled structures, delighting in the 3D aspect of them. I began seeing mine as some intricate, turn of the century music box made by an eccentric artisan in some alleyway of Venice, or Prague. I kept layering and building, adding a few old domino pieces. Some playing cards. Some dragonfly wings. I glued on an old coin with a seahorse on top of an old British penny farthing. I made sure the music box would still work once I had adhered it with the apoxie clay.

I had such fun constructing this. I just let my imagination go. I didn't dwell on trying to make it anything other than what it wanted to be. And then, when we put the final coat of paint on, the whole thing came to life. It stopped being a mash of different objects, and suddenly looked like it all belonged together. I fell in love with it then and there. When I turned the music box key, and the faintly haunting sound of 'Unchained Melody' drifted up from it, I have to say I grinned like a kid.

I'll be doing more things like this very soon, incorporating pieces of my artwork into them. I can't wait to see where this leads.