Wire Haired Harry

Wire Haired Harry by Anne Kneller

This plaster face is made entirely from items from the dust bin!  All year long, we collect throwaway items that get repurposed into portraits with personality. We made about 20 masks over the last couple of years and display them in the small bathroom off of our kitchen, the room I refer to as my gallery.

When summer comes, my daughter and I make up a batch of Plaster of Paris which is poured into the facial shapes we have carved out of sand and carefully embellished with our collected items. These include all manner of broken pottery, wire, bottle caps, christmas lights and general rusty stuff which we press into the sand, careful to leave a portion of the items exposed so that they stick to the plaster. After the plaster hardens, we pop them out of the sand and wash and brush them off. We then go about painting and varnishing the surfaces and gluing on additional items. A hanging hook is placed on the back in the wet plaster for wall display.

 

To give the faces personality takes some planning, trial and error. But it's fun and imaginative and a project that is fill of surprises and makes us smile. They make great gifts.

 

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