New Project Idea and Smashing Bottle Caps!

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I am working on a new project.  It involves smashing bottle caps and recycled plastic shrinky dinks.  It's pretty much the best of both worlds!  This was the first time I had attempted smashing bottle caps and now I can see why my good friend, Christopher Reitmaier (who I have blogged about before because he's amazing), loves working with them.  It's highly addictive.

My new project needs a little tweaking, but I am very excited about it!

So Christopher was in town this past spring for a bit and he and I got together for lunch one afternoon.  He had been traveling around Europe for a year or so and mentioned he had gone to Russia.  I commented on how I like Soviet era items and he said he would make me a bottle cap medallion with a Soviet coin on it!
When I got it, I loved it, of course, but I couldn't help but notice it was missing the iconic Soviet red and so I decided to do a little collaboration while I was working on this new project of smashed caps and plastic. 
I added the red border cap and I painted some red around the CCCP coin.  I really like it.  I added a magnet and now it's on my fridge....
It's not the first time we have collaborated.  I think we're pretty good at it. :)

Thanks, Christopher!!!

My 1st Flower Mandala Sculpture with Christopher Reitmaier

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My good friend, Christopher Reitmaier, who is an amazing artist, asked me to help him with one of his flower mandala sculptures for the Cathedral Park Jazz Festival.
These sculptures are relatively large and require a fair amount of flowers and since we are both creators of reused materials it was only natural to go the flower warehouse where all the flowers arrive into Portland and dig them out of the trash and give them a new life.
In all fairness, Christopher has done quite a number of these mandalas so he's quite familiar with where to grab these flowers.  I had no idea.  I was his apprentice for this project.

After making a pretty good flower haul, Christopher prepped the flowers and on Friday we both went out to St. John's where Cathedral Park is and got settled in to create the flower sculpture.  I have to say that it was very fun, which I assumed it would be.  Christopher is a very lighthearted, fun fellow and I very much enjoy being around him.
By the way, here is a link to his website.  Please check it out.  http://www.somniative.com/

Here are some of the photos of the progression of the mandala.

Christopher at his finest wearing the beginning of the mandala's centerpiece.

Christopher, the very serious artist wearing one of his amazing pendants that I love!

Mandala in progress.

Christopher adding petals of color on the greenery.  I made him skip.

He's having Way too much fun!

Documentation that I really did help on the project.

Mandala's centerpiece.

The finished mandala.

It took both of us about 3 hours to create this sculpture.  The people at the festival were really pleased and a lot of people told us how beautiful it was.

We left for a while to grab a bit to eat and then I took off to do some errands.
 I came back about 2 hours into the festival and when I looked for the mandala, it was pretty much gone.  There was nothing but bits of flowers and leaves that the children were playing left.  It was unbelievable.
I have no idea how long it lasted into the festival, but I guess the children took a liking to it and destroyed it.  At least they had fun.  Yet just another example of impermanence in the universe.

Hearts,
Bece