Metals– From Heap of Trash to Joys of Treasure

What images arise when someone calls word ‘metal’? Coins, weapons, machines, ornaments, scrap, vehicles and etc! And periodic table of elements for those of students! Well, undoubtedly, for thousands of years, metals have been living with us in their various forms and shapes. Traders and merchants loved them for their currency value in the form of coins. Militaries craved for them to use as means of warfare. Women fancied metals in the forms of ornaments and jewels.

Metal and Metal Crafts:

Malleability is an inherent characteristic of metals allowing metals to be worked, hammered and shaped without breaking. Likewise, ductility allows metals to be stretched and twisted in the form of wires. As a result of malleability and ductility, number of metal crafts around us cannot be numbered. From food canes to heavy industrial machines and from war tanks to flying rockets, all are favors by metals.

To artists relating to all fields, metals hold special reverence as these metals have always helped them shaping and framing their artistry through them. Robotic terminators, predators, aliens and their weaponry are examples metals usage in modern movie art and sci-fi art. With increasing popularity of such characters, a new era of science and literature has begun. But, for the sake of our earth and environment, recycled art should be focused more and more.

Metals vs Environment:

As soon as world entered an age of industrialism, metals’ usage increased by nth times and this huge demand led to mass production of metals through metallurgy. For almost 2 centuries (apparently) things kept going quite smoothly and metals in various forms, infused in all our offices, houses, play grounds, hospitals, science laboratories, battle grounds and peace temples.

To keep up with demand, metallurgy was encouraged more and more until 2nd half of last century when men realized that we have imbalanced the environmental equilibrium. For not only the environment, the very life of man has been hit hard by them. For instance, heavy metals ions are enough to cause cancer, organ diseases, nervous damage, and at most, death. And since then, environment has become the prime focus of politicians and social environmentalists.

Metals and Modern Arts:

Metals bear great potentials of artistic adventurism. But scrap metals are twice admirable for their artistic rashness. The dumped vehicles, worn out home machines, out dated industrial machines are the biggest source of scrap. But all this scrap does not reach wreck yards and furnaces and reused in some other forms.
Recycling is a process of employing already existing things for other uses and applications. So when these articles are abandoned by us as an acute form of junk, litter and waste, scrap artists pick them up from vendors and start turning them into arts crafts. In modern movies, robotic characters are quite common. So, making scrap sculptures of these characters is a best use for the metals lying in junk yards.

These terminators, predators, Spartans, transformers, scorpions, motor cycles and furniture made out of scrap metals are worth thousand dollars. They teach the humanity the lesson of being beautiful, profitable and Eco-friendly. Besides, these metal crafts and scrap sculptures carry a strange sense of beauty that draws everybody towards it. The beauty lies in the process of transformation that is how a heap of junk and trash is converted into a piece of art which is worth treasuring.