ArtFire

OOAK: 10" tall x 7 ¾ " across x 3 ½ " deep, doors will stand open or closed

My goal with this piece was that I didn't want to do anything real obvious, like a map of her route, or have a lot of words like "courage" or "pioneer" because I hate that kind of crap. I wanted it to be more abstract, a view of her as an adventurer without me having to say "adventurer"! And I liked the idea of used bits of hardware to represent her tenacity and her mechanical prowess. I like that the doors are a bit warped, the paint is uneven, the washers are rusty, which gives it all a slightly grimy, imperfect feel. And I like how my rubber stamp images look like rough woodcuts. I have the soft lace, but it's cheap and strange-looking with unevenly dyed bits. So she's not girly. I didn't want to do a straight "here's the manly Amelia and here's the spongy feminine Amelia" and I think I've achieved that. Is it steampunk? Maybe a little. If you're interested in my process and materials, read on:

I got this little box at a thrift store a couple years ago. It was a total piece of crap, covered in ugly brown contact paper. It looked like maybe it had been used as a Barbie clothes closet, because it has a little bar inside where you could hang little clothes. But it was wood, and wood is always salvageable. So I stripped the vinyl paper off it, painted it with gesso, painted it blue, then did a wash with a darker blue so it's not a flat color.

On the left door you'll recognize an iconic image of Amelia in her flight goggles. I carved this rubber stamp based on an old photo. She also used to wear a string of pearls with her flightsuit, so I outlined the door in pearls. The right door is supposed to look vaguely like plane propellors. I thought about going to the toy store and buying some party favor planes and using those but then I decided that I would challenge myself to use only what I had on hand to create what I needed. Plus I wanted it to look a little rougher. So, the propellor thingies are bottle caps with flip tops from injection bottles glued on top, then I cut out vaguely propellor-shaped bits from some copper tags, and hot glued it all together. Each is a wee bit different, with some added bit of hardware thrown in. I stained them with alcohol ink and then bits of coppery paint. I found a wing nut for the left door handle and some other handle-y thing for the right door. There's also another wing nut on the top with a bottle cap and a washer, all painted copper, sort of a tiny little flight sculpture.

On the inside of the right door you can see another image of Amelia, this one as a child--this is also a rubber stamp I carved based on a photo. She's very similar-looking to her adult self: looking straight into the camera and smiling with her mouth closed. I also had a little fuse box with the name "Littelfuse" which I thought would go cute with the image of the adventurous little girl. There's a doll shoe I found on a walk. I know those are cottle pins, but I think they look like hairpins, so I thought that worked well. The lace is plain white dyed with the same blue wash as on the box itself, and hot-glued on to stand up in ruffles (there's also some more of this lace on the top of the box). 1897 is the year she was born.

Inside the left door I used a bunch of old airmail stamps with great pics of old planes on them. Then I used her flight license number to add to that grouping. The postage stamp on the inside is the Amelia Earhart stamp, and 1937 is the year she disappeared (she was 39 on her round-the world flight!).

The bar I mentioned for hanging Barbie clothes is thickly wrapped in some novelty yarn so it looks sorta like clouds and sky. The die is from a Monopoly game variant and says "go" on two sides. The blue fluffy stuff in the bottom inside is tulle, and I glued 3 similar-looking bits of hardware in it.

The other shots give a view of the outside sides. Basically it's more dyed lace, hardware pieces, fuses, wire that I curled, and packing tape transfers of writing from Amelia's flight journals, which is mostly indecipherable but interesting to look at.

**NOTE: There is a sturdy wire hanger built into the back of the piece for hanging on the wall**

*other note: the gold thick nut that shows up in the pictures on the top of the box under copper-colored washer-bottle cap-wingnut piece is no longer there. I had the piece in a show and they knocked the whole top piece off! Grr. So I glued it back on without the nut as it wasn't sticking well anyway. Otherwise, everything else is as shown.

wood, acrylic paint, gesso, lace, hardware findings, paper, ink, alcohol ink, hand-carved rubber stamps, used postal stamps, wire, plastic, tulle, yarn, beads, copper