Tara Donovan

One of my favorite things to do in San Diego is visit the museums. Its actually one of my favorite things to do in any city, but I am more familiar with San Diego's of course since I live here. 2/3 of my family moved to Maryland a couple of years ago, giving me the excuse to visit our country's capitol, where ALL the museums are free to the public. Amazing. Although our city here on the west coast does have admission fees, which are usually the same price of a movie ticket, there are a couple loopholes once in a while. Every Tuesday of the month there is a group of different museums that are free in Balboa Park, and then of course there is TNT, or Thursday Night Thing at the Museum of Contemporary Art which used to be every month, now is every few months, always advertised on the Museum's website TNT used to be free, but now they do charge $10.00 for the general public, $7.00 for students, and free to members. Still worth it, in my humble opinion.

Right now, at the MCASD downtown, they have an exhibit on Tara Donovan's works, the largest survey of her pieces since she started the projects. For those of you who are 25 years old or younger, the exhibit is FREE!! Otherwise I believe it is $10.00 for general public, $7.00 for students, free for members. Tara Donovan is an artist who for over a decade now has been taking man-made objects that we use in everyday life, and allowing them to speak to her in an artistic way. Let me explain that... She will take an object like a toothpick,tempered glass, or paper plates, notice how it's physical properties work naturally and what the object's capability or potential is. Then she will produce a sculptural piece made from thousands of that object that reflects not only this capability and natural physical property of the object, but also morphe or tweak it to reflect geological properties that we see around us in nature. It is incredible, and if you haven't already, you need to go see this exhibit... I love her. I've seen the exhibit twice now, the first time with a friend, the second by myself while listening to the audio tour that has Tara's commentary on it. I think I enjoyed it more the second time, with the solitude to soak in what the objects were saying to me, as any type of art will speak to you differently each time you see it, one of my favorite qualities and a main reason why I am so addicted to the art culture.

Here is an example of one of her pieces made out of styrofoam cups and hot glue.

So go see the exhibit, and then let me know what you think, what it made you feel like, how her work penetrated you. It's on exhibit until February 28th. If you don't live in SD... check her out online at the link I posted on this post.

Bottle Cap Earrings

This Christmas, I had to get creative with the gifts I was giving due to the lack of money in my bank account... so surprising in this economy, right.  So I decided to give all the girls in my life a pair of home-made earrings.  Thanks to my beer drinking habit, I was able to accumulate a rather constant supply of bottle caps for the project.  The only things I needed to purchase were a box of some 20 gage wire which I found in assorted colors  and then the earring hooks to attach them to... all of this for about ten bucks which provided enough supplies for about 20 pairs... steal!!  So first things first, I needed to puncture a hole in the cap with a nail and hammer for when I put the wire through later.  It's easier to do this first because the nail will easily puncture the cap before its flattened.  Second step is to flatten the bottle cap, which is the most annoying part and will take the longest depending on how many caps you are flattening.  I used 4 caps per pair of earrings, so I had quite a few to flatten.  Do this part outside, on concrete or some type of flat hard surface where you can hammer the metal cap and not damage anything.  The easiest thing I found was to start by hammering out the rippled edges first and then start to flatten the entire thing.    

  

After flattening all the caps, you can start to wire them right away if you want to keep the logo of whatever beverage it was taken from, or... prime and paint the caps various colors; which is what I did.  

 

Once painted and dried, just puncture the 20 gage wire through the hole in one cap, make a swirl or some unique design with the wire to push against the cap, knot the wire around an earring post, and come back down to do the same thing to the second cap.  And voila!  You have a chic pair of earrings without breaking bank that are awesome conversation starters and a cool way to recycle!!