What inspires me? Sometimes, it’s just plain silliness and weirdness. Such was the case with The Eyestalk.
It started with my chair at the office. For the most part, it’s a pretty comfortable chair, but the arms were pretty beat up. They looked like someone (or something) had be
en chewing on them. So I covered them with purple duct tape. I thought they looked ok… I did a nice, neat job of taping, and purple is my favorite color. Now, any of you who have ever worked in an office will guess that the Big Boss did not care much for my artistic way of making my chair stop grabbing my shirt sleeves.
Eventually, I got new arms for the chair. After all, the chair was comfortable and in good shape. Being the artistic and ever so slightly naughty person that I am, I didn’t feel I could part with the duct tape-covered arms. So I added some eyestalks and propped the resulting pieces of art on my monitor.
My friend Jennifer admired them greatly, and admitted that she was jealous because she had no eyestalks in her office. Being the artistic and excellent friend that I am, I headed right on over to Michael’s after work and picked up some styrofoam and an even larger wiggly eye. The base is covered with tissue paper and painted with various metallic colors of Lumiere acrylics. The eyeball is painted with blues and greens, also Lumiere.
The Eyestalk lives in Jennifer’s office. When she is feeling particularly silly, she lets it wander the building and visit other people’s offices. I’m delighted that I can make other people smile, and if they think I’m a little weird in the process… so what?
The Eyestalk © Kelly Naylor 2007
