Art From Junk: Audio Cassette Tapes

I randomly decided yesterday to make an art piece out of random junk I've had lying around the house. My husband and I are talking about buying a house this summer...so I am in the mindset of cleaning out. Which means going through and clearing out all the random stuff I tend to hoard to use as "craft supplies". I have such a hard time throwing anything away! Case in point...cool art piece made from junk. But I figure if I actually MAKE stuff from the junk NOW....that I won't need to MOVE it all LATER. Well, it'll be moving (unless I sell it), but it will be a piece of art and not random componants that contriute to being part of boxes & bins & piles of junk.

Now I'm no uber-enviromentalist or eco-freak, I just hate being wasteful. My protest to my husband is usually "But I can USE that for SOMETHING!" It's the curse of being an artist. I know it's got to drive him crazy sometimes, but he loves me anyway!

I love the idea of making something cool from stuff that most people would throw away. This is my first piece I've done like this. This is made of scrap wood (much cheaper that canvas!...like...FREE), some old mesh screen that I picked up off the curb once a while ago (also free), and some old audio cassette tapes I found yesterday. And of course...paint. And some hot glue. And screws (which were unfortunately too long and stick out the back...so I either need to figure out how to cut off the pointy ends sticking out the back...cover them with something...or just redo it with smaller screws).

The tapes were ones I knew I wouldn't be listening to again, like mix tapes I'd made back before I had a CD player in my car. None of the tapes were pre-recorded ones. Even though cassettes are practically obsolete, I can't bear to destroy a pre-recorded one. One of the ones I found was a Rainbow Brite song tape. Rainbow Brite! You think I could put that on E-bay? Some 80's nostalgia nut might want it right? Others I found were some of my "nature story" tapes I used to listen to as a child...like Peter Cottontail. Those I am most definitely keepng. Aunt Grandma gave me those. I'm curious if they exist on CD or if I'm going to have to have my husband or father transfer them from the cassette to CD (or mp3).


How many people ou there still have cassette tape players? I have one in my car (in addition to a CD player) and one on a small CD/Cassette/Radio boom box. Right now I use the tape deck in my car to play my iPod...through one of those cassette adapters that was originally for playing a Discman (portable CD player) in the car. It basically looks like a cassette tape with a cord sticking out that you plug into the headphone jack.