From battery covers to bird houses

This nesting box was once a Chevrolet Volt battery. It was designed especially for the endangered scaly-sided merganser in China. A few months after it was installed, a merganser hen and her eleven chicks moved in.

General Motors has made a lot of these, and they have lasted some very harsh winters and many squirrel attacks. The old batteries came from prototype cars, were damaged in assembly, or were used during training exercises. Instead of sending them out to a landfill, GM reuses them to provide shelter for bats, ducks, and birds.

The project was inspired by GM global waste reduction manager John Bradburn's personal experiences with nature. John, who grew up building nest boxes in his youth, said: "Once I saw the Chevy Volt battery cover in our plant, I knew it would make a good nest box. To test the idea five years ago, I built a prototype and within two weeks, I had a hen hooded merganser nesting in it."

I don't think there's an old battery cover lying around here somewhere, but I hope I can create something really nice for the chirping dozen of sparrows that always come around my front yard to hang out, feed and play.

Comments

The Adorable Sculptures of Yen Yen Lo

These images are from a series of wall sculptures created by Yen Yen Lo . Here you can see her intricately textured ceramic pieces, looking downright adorable. Yen Yen Lo's eye for the unique and whimsical is delightful. Apparently they are not intended for kids under 16. Fifteen-year-olds cannot be trusted with fragile stuff. Get them a Funko Pop instead.

A Look at Karl Arnaiz's "Duality"

It 's me, not the artist. Karl Arnaiz's "Duality" (currently on view at Eskinita Art Gallery ) is an invitation to ponder the complexities of life and appreciate the balance that exists even in differences. This 36 x 27-inch piece in charcoal and watercolor isn't just art that looks pretty on a wall. It's art that makes you stop, think, and maybe even re-evaluate how you see the world. Karl Arnaiz paints a meditation on death and its contrasting yet inevitable connection with life. In Duality, he explores the darker corners of the human experience. There is a certain sense of psychological imprisonment that permeates his work, as he paints a woman confined in a room with a disconnected skull floating against the wall. It shows how powerless humans are in the face of mortality and how the imminent passage of time from the woman’s face to the skull is simply nothing but a straight line, a blank, negative space on the wall, showing how nothing can obstruct death...

How sculptor Ptolemy Elrington turns old hubcaps into works of art

One British artist has found treasure in the junk that some people throw away and, using his creativity and resourcefulness, turns it into metal masterpieces. Ptolemy Elrington, who is currently based in Brighton, England, takes abandoned hubcaps and repurposes them into spectacular animal sculptures using hand tools and wire. Ptolemy specializes in wheel trims, but any piece of discarded metal scrap is a potential art masterpiece in his eyes. His creations can take anything from a single day to three months, such as the ten-meter long dragon he built from 200 hubcaps, which sold for £3,000. Check out the video, embedded below, and his website for more. [h/t: FREEYORK ]

finding cain

Search This Blog