Wire Art: Energy at Play!

Posted May-06-2007

By Chris Dunmire

In 7th grade I had a home economics/sewing teacher named Mrs. Button. I'm NOT kidding — that was her real name! And in her class I learned how to sew a letter-shaped pillow (an "H" for our school name). I didn't do sew good with the pillow, but I always have fun telling people about my sewing teacher who's last name was "Button."

Easily amused by such coincidental things, you can imagine my pleasant surprise when I came across a Web site named Wire Inspire featuring the work of a wire artist named Angela Hook. I'll admit, my creative imagination immediately saw a piece of whimsical wire floating through the air with a hook curved over at one end. Wires and hooks just seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly!

And it's no coincidence that this Web site "dedicated to wire art, sculpture and craft," where the artist "shares her work, inspiration, and wire bending techniques while encouraging you to express yourself using the artistic medium of wire" hooked my artistic interest, because wire represents one of the most fundamental visual elements of art: the line. How fun!

And how fun it must be to focus exclusively on this one visual element, the line, and interpret it into 3D space to produce infinite possibilities in artistic expression. It's no coincidence that Wire Inspire's tagline reads, "Release your creative energy" because in a literal sense, the line (wire) becomes the energy channel (medium) of the artist as attention is focused on transferring thought (artistic concepts) into manifested form (the piece of art). That's energy at work and play!

And this Web site is fun AND informative. It features a beautiful inspirational gallery of amazing wire creations, a video about the creative process in making wire sculpture, a creative wire newsletter you can subscribe to, FAQs, and much more. Yes, wire does inspire. Go enjoy yourself some wire-bending creativity now.

(By the way, Elizabeth Berrien (www.wirelady.com) was the first to educate me on this wonderful form of art, and I found the Wire Inspire site through her Web site. Elizabeth's site is also rich with wire art resources, breath-taking images, and instructional information.) •

See follow-up essay: Warm-Up Wire Art

© 2007 Chris Dunmire www.chrisdunmire.com. All rights reserved.