Office Supplies as ART!

I saw this article the other day and I thought this guy's art was AMAZING - making a city out of staples!

Staples Hold Artist's City Together

by Ben Muessig

(May 7) -- Los Angeles has the Staples Center. Guernsey has the staple city.

Artist Peter Root used 100,000 staples to construct a miniature metropolis on the floor of a bank atrium in the British Channel island, where the ubiquitous office supplies mimic a sprawling city with 4-inch-tall skyscrapers, 1-staple-tall low-rise buildings, and everything in between.

For the work -- dubbed "Ephemicropolis" -- Root toiled for 40 hours, meticulously piecing together the imaginary city. That wasn't easy, because the tiniest errant gesture could have made the metropolis collapse like a set of dominoes.

"[I]ts grandeur is precarious and highly vulnerable to micro-apocalyptic events such as a light breeze or a falling leaf," Root told AOL News in an e-mail interview.

This isn't the first time Root used staples in his art. The little metal fasteners played big roles in his works "Under Construction" and "Bath 2001."

But "Ephemicropolis" is bigger and more uniform than his past staple creations.

"I wanted to create a more refined piece using a single type of unit," said Root, who noted that his work is inspired by architecture, maps, computer games and toys he played with as a kid, among other things.

"Staples are available in epic quantities for a relatively low cost," he said. "They have a shiny, brand-new, perfect, man-made quality that, when viewed in a specific way, can suggest both micro and macro scale."

That dialogue between the big and the small helps make the work engaging to art viewers. So does the fact that "Ephemicropolis" could fall down at any moment.

"The work seems to benefit from having a limited life span and not existing permanently unchanged in a glass case," said Root, whose piece has stood for three weeks and is scheduled to come down next week.

"I feel people are able to recognize and connect with the labor involved in the creation process of [a] work like 'Ephemicropolis,' and that there is an element of excitement knowing that 40 hours of the hard work could be destroyed in a few seconds."

That explains why Root recently purchased a number of high-strength magnets, which he says will play an "important role in the demolition of the work."