You ever bend a paperclip out of shape and bend it into another, much more fun shape? I know I’ve done it a few times in the past, mostly when I was bored and on my lonesome and felt no need to bind several sheets of paper together. Most of my creations were cats and people or, to be more specific, disfigured felines (which for some reason looked like canines) and short-legged, big-headed hunchbacks, like the bell-ringer of Notre Dame. I wasn’t exactly Van Gogh with a paperclip – I was always more of a Picasso.
Hayley Dix, however, is a much better bender of bits of steel wire than I ever was, as shown in her remarkable new art project, “Wire Wonderland.” In it, the Middlesex University graduate creates deceptively simple but utterly stunning wireframes of woodland critters – birds and foxes, etc. – perched on and crawling across real-life fallen branches. And it looks marvelous.
As stated on Dix’s official website, “Almost as if to reincarnate the wood each piece displays a fragment of a story which is directly inspired by the environment in which it was found.” Below, you can check out images from “Wire Wonderland,” which has been selected for display at the 2012 New Designers One Year On exhibition in London. [Read more…]
