There’s a Calder show in town right now, about to leave, which is what got me thinking down this path. Calder did a little work in tin cans before he moved on to bigger metal and paint. The picture books of Calder’s work don’t show assembly and construction details.
I found The Fine Art of the Tin Can because I was looking for information about how to make art out of aluminum soft drink cans, after seeing Calder. I am impressed. I’ll take this information into visiting El Anatsui at NCMA later this month, and I’ll bet I see more in that work than I would have without reading The Art of the Tin Can.
I look at a lot of how-to and art-idea books, and between the author and Lark, they’ve hit the nail on the head this time. Just enough how-to content to give me the answers I needed about making metal parts stick together.
Way more than plenty ideas of things I had never thought of creating to get me collecting cans and thinking…
Fun to see Peter Ross, who is now a neighbor and a bit older…
Addition:
I wrote this review in Amazon some time ago, and recently copied all of my art-related reviews to my own websites for safekeeping. Just this week, I found a copy of The Fine Art of the Tin Can at a local thrift shop, and snagged it. (I had reviewed a library copy, back when Amazon didn’t insist on your buying all the items you reviewed through them.) It’s still a great book, and it’s making me want to start collecting tin cans… heaven help me, I’m trying to get rid of raw materials <> textiles. Sigh. Also slightly bittersweet to see books I love and wanted to own come into the recycle stream, as people age up and downsize their libraries. This isn’t a book to discard lightly.
