From junk to steam punk

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We came upon Sean Boyd, Junk Artist while wandering around Queenstown, New Zealand on Segways last week. His works are an enchanting combination of beautiful and clever. Until he points out that this part is a kitchen tap, or that is part of a bedside lamp they look like a carefully manufactured whole: As long as they were manufactured in the universe in which Flash Gordon was in charge of design decisions. Topping this off, when you pick up his pieces you realize they are heavy – no lightweight, glued together fragility for Boyd, it’s all screwed together and feels real.

Inspired by Boyd’s works, my family headed off to Reverse Garbage on the weekend and spent $30 on a motley range of stuff. Reverse Garbage is like an Aladdin’s den of possibilities. There’s almost nothing there that you would want to use for its originally designed purpose, but there are shelves and bins and piles of things you could use for something. So we came away with knobs for the ends of poles, cones used to hold spools of thread on weaving machines, plastic coffee cups and a range of other things that we actually can’t identify. We then had a moment like that scene from Apollo 13 where a whole pile of stuff is dumped on a desk and the engineers are told they need to create an air filter out of it.

My nine-year-old’s first creation lacks the polish and shine of Boyd’s works but isn’t a bad start.

junk gun2To see more of Sean Boyd’s work, and to buy pieces, take a look at www.seanboyd.co.nz or search Google for “Sean Boyd Junk Artist”. I highly recommend you do.

 

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