Scrap Metal Art and its Newer Dimensions

 

You know what’s common among air clocks, lamps, tire rims, stoves, bicycles, car jacks, washers, crates, tie pins, coins, metal card holders, chains, gears, file cabinet and every other thing on earth? Sooner or later, they all turn into junk, trash and waste. Phew! Things are worth keeping as long as they are alive to some purpose and when they die to the purpose they are kept for, they are dumped and go to trash.
As soon as things become trash and waste, intelligent people rid themselves from them. But not all the people are always same intelligent. Some are more! And these more intelligent guys formally known as scrap metal artists turn this trash into treasures. Yes, I mean treasures.

Metal Crafts vs. Scrap Metals:

From Gold to Iron and from Tin to lead, all are metals. And when we say metal crafts, they mean metal objects made of any metals resting in Periodic Table. But when we specifically talk about scrap metals, we are talking about metals that are not alive to any further use in their existing form.
So these scrap metals are left with two options. First option remains recycling these scrap metals into newer shapes useful with other equipments. The other option is to use these scrap metals for making art from scrap. You must have seen amazing card movie character sculptures, artistic vehicle metal sculptures, card holders, lamps etc. They are some of the examples how scrap metals are used for making art objects.

How an art object is made from scrap metals:

Dumped air conditions, vehicles, aluminum cans, carriages and strollers, ladders, crates, metal buckets and industrial equipment are biggest scrap metal objects. Scrap metal artists take these articles and mold them into shapes which later serve in making art from scrap.

First step after having inspiration is to make pencil drawings of the subject. Every complete shape is a collection of smaller random shapes. It’s somewhat related to concept of limits in mathematics. When all shapes are identified, artists choose for scrap metals that best resemble the shapes. Unlike potters who have to form an object through wet clay, scrap metal artists have to rely only on existing shapes. They use various washers, dyers, gears, nuts, chains and bolts.

Metal crafts made through scrap art aren’t like placing circles into circled slots and squares into squared slots. This is rather like a puzzle where we have to test and see which shape fits best to the idea. Even a small Art From Scrap is the result of various juxtapositions of metal pieces until these make into a best composition. It involves a lot of scrap cleaning, cutting, bending process. And don’t ever think it possible without welding.

New Dimensions To be exploited with Scrap Metal Art:

Movie Art and Sci-Fi Art are biggest sources of inspirations for scrap metal artists. You must have seen many sculptures of Terminator s, Predators, Aliens, Spartans and Wall-E etc. They all come from same scientific fiction.

Though novelty without these sculptures isn’t losing any luster, yet corporate businesses and individual clients are more and more focusing on custom sculptures of their own needs. For example a business dealing with mobile services would need a unique mobile statue resting in the middle of lighting fountain of his office hall. For this reason scrap metal art is becoming more and more customized and personalized.