Derick.

Derrick has been dismantled, thrown away and discarded. A lonely man who once had a spark such like a spot welder he is looking for an owner to re-light his life.

Derick has been made up from many materials I found from Bills room (the teachinition), Bill was happy to give them me for my project as he is quite a holder, and seems to keep very beautiful melts and strong materials that can be used again, that what I like about working with metals is that they are very strong with age and can be changed or aged easily.

I used the middle part of an old spot welder that had mounds of copper wrapped and knotted in the middle part of the big clump of metal, because copper in a good conductor, it took me a whole day to get that copper out, I swear there was so much, I almost took it to get weighed in at the scrap yard. Then I added the arms with was attached to some mechanism in Bills room, once I found them they were such a perfect happy accident. Then the bow tie that had Bill had a big bag of spares for the easels. At this point I was getting all excited that it was coming together perfectly and then the head. The head was the hardest most terrifying part, because inside that ball of metal was a compressed spring and no matter how much we tugged and sawed and ripped we could get it open to release the pressure, so I decided to drill into it, the outside of the head was soft metal which melted of, but the once I had got down to the spring the whole room trebled because of the harsh steel spring that was rumbling about and would not drill! So I pushed it a little further so that the head wouldn’t tilt from the shallowness and would just sit nicely. Then I felt it as too chunky and not representing a bot, it needed feet, it just looked to box’y without them, I found some old teaspoon with the tea still on in the old mechanics building and stuck them up the gaps in the spot welder part, but the gaps were wide and the spoons wouldn’t sit, so I used a block of wood to wedge the spoon handle into place and sit strong. I then continued to add more of a personality with my bot, adding a bike chain with an old little lightbulb on the end. I thought it added character, some would say a childish, sad characteristic that you want to make happy or feel emotional to.

I love the outcome and that I show off some personality and bring the viewer closer to my work by adding the characters and the emotions to the work. It means the viewer may think they can relate to the emotion or the personality or that they bond with the character.