Rescue of art, polishing and surprises

The weekend has in the main been given over to spring cleaning our place - including my benches and jewellery studio. The studio spring clean has included finishing the polishing of some Daily Word bowls and some rugged rings.

©2015 Barry Smith - Detail from rescued artwork

But first the story of the art rescue. On Saturday morning Fiona and I were about to jump into our car and return home after a coffee in town. At about the same time we both exclaimed that we saw a trailer of rubbish going by that included a piece of art work that looked like it was inspired by Rosalie Gascoigne. We thought we'd follow the trailer and if it were heading to the rubbish tip see if we could negotiate to rescue it.

Well the short story is that we arrived at the tip just as the trailer was being given approval to dump the load. I was able to negotiate with the dump coordinator and the owner of the piece (artist Jonathan Wright) for me to have the work (I even offered to pay for it - though Jonathan said I could have it); and after waiting for him too unload most of his load I was able to return to the car and Fiona (who couldn't come on site as she had inappropriate footwear).  The piece is about 1mX1.2m; and was made from numbers recycled from the same rubbish tip. As you can see from the photo below the art is at our place - we are not sure what we will do with it but we could not let it be trashed - it reminded us too much of Rosalie.

©2015 Barry Smith - A Construct by Jonathan Wright

©2015 Barry Smith - More detail from A Construct

I have also spent quite a bit of time giving a second life to a trivet I bought in Townsville. Couldn't bring myself to cut this one up; and Fiona had admired its art-deco design

©2015 Barry Smith - Silver-plated trivet before polishing

©2015 Barry Smith - Silver-plated trivet after polishing - lovely copper showing through

©2015 Barry Smith - Bit of art deco detail

The Daily Word bowls are all shiny.

©2015 Barry Smith - Daily Word bowls

I also polished some recycled metal rings - they are all a bit rugged but I had to give them a life.

©2015 Barry Smith - A stash of rings

And I had another surprise when we shopped at our local IGA - the Lomandra design I created for the Waterfall Walkway and the Flow artwork in the store has been used on new signage in the store - pretty cool.

©2015 Barry Smith - Lomandra design - part of new IGA signage - got to love that

A very good weekend in all.