Now that I live in England, the only real hobby I’ve ever had I can’t do anymore, and that is play baseball. You see, it’s not a really big sport over here. Now, if I had spent my youth playing and watching snooker, darts, or polo I might be telling a different story right now. But the facts are, baseball is just not that popular, which probably explains why there’s never been a baseball player named Nigel Ainsworth Dillingham…the 3^rd. With this in mind, I decided that it was about time I got myself a hobby that I could do in England. And since it’s pretty hard to play baseball by yourself, I decided to choose a solo venture.

The day that I was flying back to England from Canada after Christmas, I went to the Art Gallery of Ontario with my family. We saw a lot of exhibits that day but my favourite one (besides the photography) was the wire sculpture gallery. I didn’t even know it was there, but my mum wanted to see it, so we went. I thought everything was so amazing. And the range of detail was so great. There were really simple things, like the outline of cat, and there were really detailed things like an entire working circus. But there was just something about the wire sculptures that were really inspiring. I really liked how the art was multidimensional; the sculpture itself was the art piece but the shadow also cast a really amazing image. Needless to say, when I got back to England I decided I would try my hand at wire sculpting. My grandfather made some really amazing wire sculptures (including portraits and a big airplane) so I was hoping that it might be in my blood. My inspirations for this experiment include Alexander Calder, Robert Fairfield, and anyone who can draw a picture without taking the pencil off the page.

Here are a few of my first efforts. I can see a difference in skill level between my first effort (an owl) and my most recent piece (a bike); I hope you can, too!

I am using a plastic coated garden wire. The plastic coating peels off sometimes if I abuse it with my pliers. I am working on developing a gentler touch. I also bought a smaller gauge wire so I can make some more detailed things, but I haven’t tried it yet.

At first I wanted to try to make everything using only one piece of wire, but I found out quickly that it was going to be very difficult (perhaps, it’s something to aspire to). But for the most part the first few tries are all with one piece. The extra details for each item include: the owl’s beak, wings, and feet; the man in the hat’s nose; and the flower’s spiral centre.

For my first arguably successful attempt at a one piece sculpture I made a woman’s face. I found in the end I had to use a few small pieces of wire as fastening devices just to secure some areas.

My housemates suggested I make something three-dimensional, and I immediately thought of making a bike. So, that’s what I did. This one is definitely not made from a single piece of wire. I used a lot of different pieces and I don’t think it would have worked any other way.

I have found that using one continuous piece of wire creates a lot of tension and you don’t always get the shape your looking for (especially with the woman’s face) because the wire is pulling in all sorts of different directions; something that might be fixed by using the thinner wire. Anyway, the bike is definitely my favourite thing so far, and I think I am going to make more bikes. I see an old timey penny-farthing bike in my future!