I had a delightful few hours today at a workshop organised by the Women’s Institute (For my sins I am President of our local one!) It was called Little Wire Birds and it was run by a lovely lady called Chris Moss. She was a great tutor, very patient and everyone went home with several birds that looked like birds, always a bonus!!

Chicken Wire Sculpture

Over the last few years I’ve made four wire sculptures, but they were quite big, made from chicken wire so it was quite a physical process, I made a chicken, a duck, a goose and a heron, they’re all life-size and situated around our garden.

These little birds are made from 1mm galvanised wire, as the tutor described, it’s sort of like doodling with wire! We made coils of wire round a doweling, then twisted them into random clusters, these made the basis of the body. We then added legs, beak and the tail. We could make them to whatever design we fancied, some made pure fantasy birds with frothy bodies and huge tails.

Over the day I managed to make four, my first two were just simple birds, sort of sparrow like. For the next one I got a bit more confident and decided to try a wren…it’s a lot more difficult trying to make a specific bird! Luckily once attached it’s distinctive little tail it did (I think!) look like a wren. The robin was my last one, the red is from a wire gauze that had been sprayed red, it was very fiddly to attach.

It was nice spending a day making things without taxing the brain too much, you could just sit and fiddle with them. It would be rather nice to get a fine wire with beads on to wrap round for an extra dimension, but I’m not sure I’ll get round to it, I ‘m happy with them as they are, they can sit on the window ledge in the conservatory.