Category: Toybits

Mad Max movie inspires big thinking on broken toy sculptures

9/19/2015

Just for the record, my Toybits were created far, far before Mad Max: Fury Road hit the theatres — although the resemblance of those Metallica-esque assault vehicles to my small sculptures is uncanny.

For some inexplicable reason (even to myself) I have been collecting the toy fragments that appear to follow in the wake of my Lego-loving nephews (and one pint-sized niece) for some years now. I sorted them by colour and last year started binding them together with found fiber-optic wiring of the same colour. The right size seems to be about 14 inches wide or high. Any more and the inner bits become obscured; any less and they seem unfinished.

I imagined these colour assemblages as live models for abstract painting — which would make those paintings not abstracts at all, but figurative works. That inherent contradiction adds to the confoundedness of these pieces that are actually put together like puzzles, with each piece added as they 'fit' onto the plastic mass.

After I inhaled the visually delicious Mad Max movie, I wondered how the Toybits series, six of which are now on display at Port Moody Arts Centre gallery until Sept. 28, would look at a fearsome scale.

I made a playdate with Mr. Photoshop in some new virtual landscapes. Voila....

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One bit, two bits, green bits, black bits

3/13/2015

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Toybits (green) - made from broken toys (Carlyn Yandle photo)

This may be the third or fourth column/post I've written that could come under the headline, 'Overthinking will be the death of me.' There is definitely a book in there somewhere about the power of overthinking to sabotage the creative process.

My latest overthinking sabotage occurred as I was experimenting with binding up broken toy bits (consciously not overthinking why).

I was taking care of my sister's kids while idly binding one green toy remnant to another. At some point, the curious object appeared to be done. And it was good.

It's an intriguing object but when photographed is also a visually absorbing abstract. It has richness in its ability to conflate the second and third dimensions. It is heavy with cultural reference yet lightly humorous.

I was onto something.

Toybits (black) - final version (Carlyn Yandle photo)

After a couple of hours I quit because it clearly would have no logical endpoint. But if there's one thing I've learned about the creative process it's to let the failures hang around and stink up the joint for a while. In my experience, the only way to get to the source of the stench is to keep it in the periphery. And a couple of days later it came to me: I was so hell-bent on the outcome I had completely negated the making, which, when referring back to the green toy-bits cluster, was the essence of the thing: play.

I took it all apart, then started over, finding the fit between one bit to another bit, then adding one bit where it fit. (Maybe the book should be in Dr. Seuss language).

It had a beginning and an end, and the entire process was an adventure without a map. The result is a sculptural object with implied power that appears as part engine, part vehicle, part robot. It has composition, balance, architecture, intriguing sight lines and varying perspectives. It has something to tell me: Your instincts are good, keep going.

From the junk of life emerges new life.

You can see it in the above photo; it's a mess. Even as I was binding it I thought, This is not working, this is not working. Why is this not working? It has no balance, no composition. it is artless. And it was a chore from the get-go.

Toybits (black): first attempt (Carlyn Yandle photo)

So, like every creative I know, the ol' mental processor starting whirring away in the background, rolling over this concept. Friends and I talk about this slightly obsessive stage when developing a new work. You're still functional in your daily routine but that whirring puts you in a slightly distracted state. It's sort of like falling in love; there's always something there to remind you of that growing passion. And when I fall in love with an idea, I fall hard. I'm consumed by the topic like the Paul Rudd character in The 40-Year-Old Virgin who can't stop talking about Amy or The Big Lebowski's John Goodman character who links any conversation to his days in 'Nam.

I've been seeing toy-bits inspiration everywhere, including in a car column in the morning newspaper. The picture of an engine reminded me of the toy-bits clusters and suddenly I was shoving aside breakfast dishes and breakfasting people and dumping my hoard of broken toys onto the table.

I will make that engine-y thing, I said. And therein lies the fatal flaw.

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Exhibit of a great mistake was just the push I needed

2/27/2015

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Vancouver-based creative force Omer Arbel and Monte Clark teamed up to embrace the power of happy accidents (Carlyn Yandle photo)

Last week Monte Clark gave four of us some insight into how an experiment by Omer Arbel went awry and ended up as a dazzling installation in his newish Monte Clark Gallery.

The heavy, glittering swags appear as silver-dipped coral or precious Crown hardware retrieved after a palace inferno. The hardened bits of chaos are a dazzling example of why failure is vital in the push for new ideas and materials.

"Failure is a constant companion," says Vancouver-based creative force Arbel, in Vancouver Magazine.

It was the perfect preface for my '3 artworks a day for five days' challenge that bounced over to me on Facebook.

Risk is essential in my work but I don't have Arbel's creative empire to absorb expensive failures, so I turned to stuff lying around the house (a.k.a. Found Domestic Materials) in my thrice-daily experiments. The way I see it, the materials used below were already deemed waste, so if the tests didn't work out, so what? At least no new materials were harmed in the making.