UK artist Julie Alice Chappell produces some magnificent and incredibly unique artworks using the discarded components of old electronic equipments and parts. These tiny insects are sculpted from parts of old circuit boards, which offer many different tiny parts, all of which can be reworked into something pretty amazing.
The idea came a few years ago when Julie was at Thee Craft Bank in Portsmouth, which was a center that offers to take old and unwanted items from companies, with the hopes of finding anything of uses for schools, community center, or in Julie’s cases, artists. Upon finding a box of tiny components the idea of insects came to her “The first thing that came into my head when I looked at them was, ‘a mass of tiny bodies and legs…ants!’ I took them home to my children and we made ants,” she said.
Years later, after enrolling in a Fine Arts degree program, the idea came back to her. She would find more components from circuit boards that other artists had been using and decided to take them home. Then when watching a nature program involving insects, remember of her ants, and decided to start making sculptures.
She named the series Computer Component Bugs, with the intention of trying to raise some awareness in regards to environmental waste.
“The recycled bits of cultural refuse that are woven throughout my work represents a direct encounter with the excesses of modern living highlighting the dangers of planned obsolescence and e-waste in the environment. The work displays an aesthetic beauty whilst offering a socio-political discourse, attempting to reclaim waste and the destruction of the natural world, in the beauty of visual art.”
Julie Alice Chappell’s website and Facebook page via [Permaculture]
