Altered Bottles - Next Steps

Jenn Francis and I spent the good part of the day attaching things to vintage bottles. This time, we both upped the ante and attempted to go beyond what others have done with this artsy craft idea.

After our initial trials and eventual success in securing shells to bottles and then applying an interesting patina to the solder, we knew that there was more to this than being merely decorative.

The easiest and quickest thing to do was to place things; sand, beach glass and smooth river stones inside the bottles. These internal elements provide some stability to the top-heavy finished product but also it looks cool.

Jenn then placed a place card holder (an element orginally produced by Seven Gypsies) made from twisted wire. Suddenly, the bottle had function and provided an additional option for adding a written statement of some sort to the thing.

I gathered together some microscope slide "charms" (made by sandwiching mini-collages between the slides which are then sealed with copper tape and solder) to add even more visual elements to the bottle.


This proved to open the project to many more possibilities for artistic expression, again beyond the merely decorative.

After we gathered them together, it was agreed it would be difficult to break up the set...or that to create new, complete and cohesive sets of altered bottles.

My next step is to just go into multiples that can be seen as an assemblage made up of individual pieces grouped together.

Also, attaching something other than the expected shells is a natural progression. I've tried large pieces of glass and slides.

Next steps - more found objects as well as other natural objects.

Stay tuned.

NOTE: The patina on the solder still needs to be applied to many of the pictured bottles.

Bad Words: A New Blog

Sequestering the art and craft goodness from my feeble attempts writing by moving the bad poetry and other text-based junk to my new blog: Bad Words .

Lots of old crap to be moved first and then I'll add newer stuff as it floats to the top.

Thanks to the three of you who read this tripe. If you're suffering from insomnia, this may help.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

This poem has always spoken to me, but I am again open to such voices whispering and sometimes shouting at me to listen. Having spent time in nature again as of late, I am reminded of the imporantance of such things as paying attention to God's creations and in doing so, commit a kind of prayer.

How many gifts and blessings have been provided me, I cannot begin to enumerate for the count is indeed higher than I probably know. But I am grateful for those who have come into my life and for the love they give and hope I show that love in return. I am grateful for the moments shared and the moments alone during which the common and the unique can be viewed as precious.

For these things and all the others that may seem trivial to some, I thank the universe and the spirit found within it. Truly and repeatedly I will tell you, I am a blessed man.

I do not try to equate science to concepts of God. One is spirit, one is of the mind. They are separate and they are one. There is no conflict as I do not try to prove the presence of one with the ways of the other.

There is truth in both.