Paper product

When I was visiting my parents in the US last month, I stumbled on a rusty bit of metal in the yard. It took me ages to work out what it was... An old gate latch? The innards of an old machine? A mechanism for harvest? Turns out it was some yard art. I don't know if yard art will ever catch on outside of the US. Surely the garden itself is supposed to be art, and weird pieces of old rail ties bent to look like a little man playing saxophone (as in the case in my parents' back 40) is something else altogether...

Aside from yard art, when someone can take an object in existence and give it a totally new life and a new context, I get excited. The work of Su Blackwell was featured in the December issue of House & Garden magazine, and I love it. She uses old books to create sculptural vignettes by cutting their pages to form a story in three dimensions. Her work will be on show at the Courtauld Institute from 26th January.