Okay, not tinker-toys (I'll bet it's been done) but jello, pots 'n' pans.
Headlands Center for the Arts resident finalist Liz Hickok builds a miniature San Francisco in jello. She phtographs and videotapes the cityscape as it morphs, melts, decays.
Visiting Chinese artist Zhan Wang creates a room-sized San Francisco out of ubiquitous Chinese stainless steel teapots, pans, strainers, and such for his show, On Gold Mountain at the Asian Art Museum.
I worked with Hickok on her piece for the Headlands show, but never asked her what her heart-connection to jello is. I like the pretty poly colors and the illusion she creates on film. And the rot. It may be a childhood thing.
For Wang seeing the city develop out of the common-ware export of his homeland must be connected to the same material he pounds over rocks to create his reflective scholars' rocks. Stainless steel is the technological wonder of the industrial age, the tarnish-less gold of the people.
The city, and the material it is reflected in—it all depends on your perspective. This perspective from NASA.
