Instead of talking books, today I’m talking about a newfound hobby—junk art! A couple of years ago, I went to an art fair while on vacation in Michigan and came across this amazing artist who made art out of found metal items: old tools, car parts, silverware, etc. I was in love with so many of them, and I ended up buying two—one that’s hanging out right by my front door and another that I gave to my dad for Father’s Day. Choosing just two was almost impossible.
Well, just recently my husband started talking about getting a welder. I jumped at the idea because it meant we can make junk art of our own!! And, just like that, a new hobby was born.
We’ve been planning and gathering parts from neighbors while we waited for the welder to come in (though I’ll confess we cheated a little and made the flowers out of stuff that we bought from the hardware store). Check out our first three junk art creations (I’m including pics both in our garage and in their new home in our garden since the garage ones are a little easier to see):
We made the flowers out of nuts and bolts (which is pretty obvious). We ended up attaching a second bolt to the bottom of the first one so that we could stick the flowers into the ground and they’d stay, which ended up working really well.
Our third project (since there were two flowers) was the cute wrench grasshopper. I found examples on Pinterest (click the link if you want to see lots of examples of adorable junk art—mostly animals) and figured he was a good project to start with since he’s relatively simple. Since Scott is brand new to welding (he took a class, but only got partway through it before it got cancelled due to COVID), there’s a bit of a learning curve, especially when it comes to welding different materials and thicknesses together. I think he did a darn good job for a first try!!
I’ve got some more complicated projects up my sleeve too, but we’re holding off on those until Scott’s had a little more practice welding and we’ve also gotten more practice with the best ways to put the pieces together. But I’m thrilled with the results of this first go at junk art!