artlab: mystery bag monsters

For yesterday’s ArtLab workshop at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art I prepared piles of Mystery Bags, filled with odd treasures and trash.

With some screws and nails, a glue gun and some paint, each person –age 4 to 74– made their own personal, idiosyncratic, one-of-a-kind monster:

And the creation below? I found it on the windowsill at the end of the workshop. It must have been made by the young girl in the first photo of this post, who received the only hinge in all of the mystery bags. I didn’t get to speak with her about her work, but I love thinking about it as a monster…