mystery bag : monsters

Tomorrow I’ll be leading another workshop at the Center For Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, Maine. To prepare, we’ve been collecting lots of bits and pieces –hardware, bottle tops, buttons, corks…– to make “mystery bags”:

Each participant will receive a bag that contains twelve or thirteen odd pieces, and they’ll choose one piece of wood as a base for their monster.

With some help from my son, I prepared more than fifty bags for the workshop.

Inevitably, after sorting through all manner of intriguing junk, we both wanted to make a monster…or two. Below is what I made from some candles, an old roll of masking tape, some yarn, a finial, and some framing braces:

Noah made the monster below with some keys, yarn, bottle caps and pipe cleaners:

And this morning, after coming across the excellent piece of wood below, I made one more:

As usual, I’ll be photographing during the workshop and will post images of all the mystery-bag monsters, soon thereafter.

Here’s to no-budget art supplies: Arte lunga, vita breve!