Found Objects

I like to use what I find. Really. There are items that I like to use that I can restock, like glasses and lightning bolts. But the things that I love are the bizarre little I'll-never-find-that-again items... like this guy's head over here.
It's a little plastic lantern charm from a bracelet. I got it from my friend, Rhinestone Rosie, in Seattle. She buys, sells and restores vintage jewelry. Every now and then, I'll walk into her little shop up on Queen Ann Hill and ask her what she's trying to get rid of. And I'll walk out with a hundred or so wacky jewelry fragments. Some I'll use immediately... others, like this one will sit on the edge of my consciousness for years until i see the place where they belong.

In this case, where it belonged was on a bolo tie at the top of this little tiny robot body that came out of a bag I bought at Goodwill.

There's a writer I love named Grant Morrison who creates these terrifyingly surreal villains, guys with scissors for hands that cut you out of reality or men who are shadows, so that all they have to do to become invisible is turn sideways to you... or maybe an evil king whose entire head is, inexplicably, a burning, dripping candelabra.

This little guy isn't one of those (but he does owe something to the example Grant set). The little body was hard to pose, but when I played with it for a while, it came to suggest  a presentation or performance. That, put together with the lantern and its association with illumination or enlightenment, gave me the idea that this would be a teacher.

The Teacher is available in my Etsy Store.

You can learn about Rhinestone Rosie here.