How do I make Scrap sculptures !! - The process

The beauty of the scrap sculpture is that, you see something at first glance & then realize/relate to the day-to-day objects which its made of!!!. That's the Aha moment which makes the work interesting & keeps me going...

How do I make scrap sculpture was a question which came from the audiences most of the time I interacted. The honest answer is - I don't know !!..... there is a state of mind, the flow state were you keep doing, & multiple decisions happen, suddenly a beautiful sculpture appears. Ahh!! that's hell of a beauty, I feel. That's the feeling I love!!

For long I never knew what was going on and how it happened. But in recent times I got opportunities to give talks on my work, then the same question appeared to me. When I looked back, at my work, I found some similarities & patterns in them. This helped me understand my work better and tweak it for better results.

Here I intend to share my process that I have followed and patterns I have found. Hope its helpful for the people interested in knowing and doing the same. Lets get started !!

A scooter made from Computer mouse, luggage wheels, heater handle, goggles, headset etc..

The work requires to collect a lot of scrap. I have been collecting since very long and have a large library of it!! collected from roads, beaches... anywhere & everywhere I go, if something seems to be interesting I pick it up. Now I have three big boxes of scrap sorted based on material, color, size etc. & everything starts from here.

One of the boxes with mostly black objects

Before getting into the building of the sculpture, there are certain thing one needs to get

conscious about.

Based on our experience, we can anticipate an objects properties & use them to create narratives

Just by looking at the image above, we can imagine holding it in our hands. Which one is the heaviest??.. 3 right....& which one is the softest?? 1..... Based on the color ,texture, shape ,form etc. we can consciously anticipate the physical properties of an object.

We can see in the above image, same material can have different property ie. one is sharp and the other is soft. So basically by manipulating a object by various operations on it, like cutting, smoothening etc, we can make a material feel different. This is important as this can create narratives like in the above case, left image is an object/tool used by the early stone-age man probably for hunting or cutting and so on...because the object property is sharp & edgy. Similarly the right image give a feeling of a mother and a child, because there are two forms, one small and the other bigger, and the softness adds to the warmth.

A material by itself make you do something with it!!

Imagine having a bubble wrap in your hand. In some time you would have popped some of them if not all, without even consciously doing so. Material by it properties makes you do thing, some operations on them. One more example will be, when you go to a mall and you receive a pamphlet (paper), after some time you would have folded it or rolled it in your hand .

In the above sculpture, Mother, I have used Water hyacinth, a water weed in various ways ie. Twisted it, Braided it, cut it etc. these operations happened because of the material property of water hyacinth which is very soft & flexible.

We register a very abstract image of what we see

When we see a thing we capture only some part of it in our memory. We loose most of the details in it. Taking an example of above tortoise, once we see it, we have a vague image of it in our mind, that's why we see the below paper sculpture also as a tortoise.

One needs an approach to what to make before even starting

By approach I mean a theme or an idea which can be from an object collected ie. you see an object and it looks like some animal and you build it using rest of the parts OR It can be a theme for which you build a sculpture using found objects ie, a sculpture built for Father's day as below .

I have worked on more of these as below.

Nostalgia, was a collection of sculpture were I tried showing my childhood memories.

I had put on weight in the lockdown times, & the first sculpture was a representation of it.

In second image the Explorer represents the trend of travel that prevails.

Third Oxy, was a sculpture that was built during the acute shortage of oxygen during Covid 19.

The sculpture of the Mother & a orangutan was built purely from the scraps washed ashore at Fort Kochi, beach Kerala.

The above Sculpture "Heart & Brain" was built on an idea that, the would is run on the decisions taken from heart or from brain ie. emotional or calculative.

The above were the pre-requisites in starting off, basically to use an object/material consciously, understand & manipulate their properties to build narratives & above all, to have an approach to what one wants to build.

Coming back to the Question - How do I make Scrap sculptures from found objects.

As mentioned it starts with the scrap library that I have built over the years. Below is the process of building the sculpture from an idea.

Collect object in the most basic form

There is an interesting pattern in the collection phase. I collect objects in the most basic form ie. the object cannot be broken down further to smaller parts. If I get a broken toy car, I would remove all the screws and separate all the parts like wheels, motor etc and then use it in the sculpture.

Look at the object collected in different angles

An object can either be the starting point of a sculpture, or be a part in making it into a complete one. Be free if the object doesn't fit into the present work, save it for the next. When you see an object in different angles, in some direction one would relate the object to something which can be made with it. Ones you have seen it, start making it. If I don't get a perfect piece from my collected scrap, I look for it or wait till I get it. Here is when the patience really matter.

One should keep in mind, there are multiple operations that can be done on an object like cutting an object into half or repeating the same shape multiple times.... in that way the object would look different in some angles.

Use Trial & Error method

Do not use mood boards/ Sketching, while making the sculpture, rather build it by placing the objects one over the other, sticking and breaking them. Keep looking at the output of each stage from different angles to get better final sculpture. The logic is that we register an abstract image of what we see & we can reproduce only what's registered.

Building of the sculpture

Here I had a starting point from a scraped part of an old printing machine.

What do you see??

I saw a Gharial in it. The sketch was done to just demonstrate what I imagined. Ones I have got the idea in place, I start building it.

Initially the larger forms are placed together to get an idea of the scale & overall form. The sculpture starts taking shape with the larger forms first & then the relatively medium sized objects come together.

Recollecting and simulation of textures over the Gharial is done at this stage. Basically covering the Major objects, to give the feel required.

The next stage is to add the Details. I add smaller parts like teeth, eyes, the scales etc, just enough to reach the sculpture that has been imagined.

The final output!!

So to wind it all up, I will put in the points what we have covered over this blog.

To make a sculpture :-

1. Have an Approach.

2. Imagine what you want to make, in combination with the scrap.

3. Do not Sketch/ take image references.

4. Consciously use the materials.

5. Make overall form/ Large part first, then add smaller parts.

6. Build on the small details, patterns etc.

7. Keep looking at the work from different angles as it develops.