Contemporary Drawings
by Michelle Flanagan

Cool Flamingos wearing sunglasses are the characters who populate this restaurant-bar in my miniature, three-dimensional sculpture originally fashioned for a t-shirt design in the fall of 2003. The annual t-shirt design was for an 'open-air' restaurant, situated on a lake, and whose characteristics included sunglasses, Florida, water, food, fun, families, a bar, boats, sun, etc. I decided to re-create the scene/restaurant as a miniature construction or 'set'.
My initial, gut impression was that the final image be something digital because it is contemporary and popular. The idea was that whatever I constructed would be photographed digitally from different perspectives, viewpoints and character poses to arrive at a montage of the scene. I would crop, edit and arrange the different pictures, or parts of pictures, by superimposing them or merging them into one final composition. The next step was to create the material to be photographed.
I decided to re-create the scene/restaurant as a miniature assemblage or 'set'. The customers would be flamingos. The scale or size of the set was unclear in the beginning and eventually was determined based on what I could find and gather for free. I gathered as much 'on-hand' and borrowed material I could until I established a good collection of doll accessories such as food and drink items, clothing, etc..

I couldn't find suitable pre-made figurines, or flamingo characters, so I made my own from a substance called crayola model magic. I then painted them, clothed them, feathered them and posed them.
Space was also a factor in determining the scale of the final set. Things needed to be removable or collapsible and relatively small for storage reasons. This lead to the use of lightweight materials and areas made as sectionals, which could be removed as needed. This kept construction fluid and allowed for accessibility which was key to the design. The bar area and roof were made as sectionals, from cardboard, poster board, and wooden dowells. I made the chairs and barstools from toothpicks, cardboard and a gluegun.
The whole project was a cumulative process where each phase and idea informed the next one and thus transformed the final design. On average, each Flamingo-'torso' is approximately 2-3 inches high. The legs are made from paper wire and paper clips, and would add approximately 2-3 inches to the height of each character. The two central Flamingos are about double the size of the others. I made a total of 18 flamingos for the scene, and the dimensions of the set are approximately 30 inches wide, 30 in. deep, and 15in. tall.
Available Materials: crayola model magic, paper clips, feathers, toothpicks, cardboard, doll clothing, doll accessories, drink umbrellas, candles, stickers, mini lights, acrylic paint, glue gun, super glue, other/misc...