a small blue thing

Liz Toohey-Wiese, 2024.

"A sign installed in the largest wildfire burn I’ve ever seen, along the BC/YK border. Borrowing the aesthetics of BC Recreation Site signs, once again pointing to the overlaps of outdoor recreation, resource extraction, and the consequences of the climate crisis. Most recreation sites in BC exist along previously built logging and mining roads.

“Forced into a great and difficult transformation” was a line I heard in a lecture on Buddhist philosophy I was listening to on my drive up north. But it became another mantra I thought about while living in a place that’s been utterly transformed by resource extraction over the past century, and as I thought about the burnt landscapes I drove through."

I have a whole box of these little tins I bought ages ago that turned out to be too big to fit in a mystery egg and too small for anything else useful.

Still iterating. The first one I glued the dividers directly to the metal sides of the tin, and then discovered that paint really doesn’t like to stick to said metal. Now I’m making a cardstock liner that can get painted before I put the dividers in.

These still take like 2 hours each to make, and I doubt I’ll get them down to even an hour. The laser-cut wood ones are infinitely faster and less fiddly. I know this.

1. Decide on layout. I traced a tin onto some scrap cardstock so I can see how the bits fit into the available space.

2. Cut a strip of paper just over a quarter inch wide. Paint it black.

3. Glue paper strip inside perimeter of tin, being mindful of the corners. Trim to fit.

4. Trace the tin onto a piece of thin cardboard. Cut out slightly within the lines, so it can fit inside the tin.

5. Glue together some little stacks of scrap cardboard to go under the cardboard from step 4, to make the tin a little shallower. This is optional but I’m glad I did it.

6. Glue the cardboard risers into the bottom of the tin, then glue the cardboard from step 4 to the risers. Your tin should now be only slightly deeper than the coffee stir sticks you are using as dividers, if that is what you are also using.

7. Run a thin line of glue around the bottom perimeter of the tin. This will hide any gaps between the cardboard and the sides of the tin.

8. Paint the bottom of the tin black.

9. Start gluing in your dividers! I started with the biggest compartment. Put the trinket in place, hold the coffee stirrer next to it, mark with a pencil, cut with scissors, check the fit, trim it a little if needed, glue into place. This is a ‘measure never, cut as many times as your heart tells you’ kind of project.

10. Once your dividers are in, run a thin line of glue along the bottom edges and the corners, to hide gaps and make sure everything is secured in place. I used a fine-tip glue bottle filled with slightly watered-down tacky glue for this.

11. Paint the dividers black.

Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia), family Strigidae, order Strigiformes, Southern CA, USA

“Costume Art” exhibit at the MET.