Outside Inspiration: Patience in Black
I am a sucker for nice recycled work. Reducing the impact on the environment and creating amazing art in the process is, well, a beautiful thing.
This bit of work you see here is amazing. I thought it looked like an intricately carved tire. Upon close inspection I saw that, yes, it actually was an intricately carved tire! And so beautiful. I can’t imagine how long it took to do this but when seeing things like this, I feel like a bit of a wimp. Polymer is so immediately responsive–we can make highly intricate looking pieces quite quickly with stamps and textures. Even our work with hand tools is relatively easy. What if we just took a little more time, a touch more care; what if we spent days and weeks creating the most beautiful thing we could imagine instead of finding the shortcuts? What would we end up with?
The amazing artist with what must be an endless supply of patience is Belgium’s Wim Delvoye. Wim works in a wide variety of rather random materials, not just tires. If you like the intricacy and detail here, you need to see his stainless steel carvings–they are similar to the tire but with dozens of layers. His front page is cartoony and fun but the work underneath is quite sophisticated. Enjoy!
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