And that is why the gentlemen from Habitat for Humanity were able to take a drill, some screws, a bunch of duct pipe and some trashed-out light fixtures and fashion them into something, well, something more than the components.
“I'm thinking it's sort of like a flower, a tree, something reaching into the heavens,” said Marvin Pauls, who was working with Jerry McCauley and Dave Chrismon at Saturday's Spontanenous Construction event. “I can't really say what it's going to become, because I don't really know yet.”
The Spon-Con is put on yearly by the folks at Home Resource, the nonprofit that collects and sells reusable building materials in an effort to reduce waste and build healthier communities.
“This is the fourth year for the event and our fifth-year anniversary, and we're just excited to have more people coming out and learning about things we can do to reduce waste, and have a good time doing it,” said Lauren Varney, who co-founded the nonprofit with Matt Hisel.
Saturday's event included live music, lots of teams building strange and possibly useful objects - though possibly not - and a thoroughly entertaining exercise known as the Art-A-Pult.
The Art-A-Pult represents the gleefully splattered intersection of the catapult and Jackson Pollock. Home Resource workers built three devices designed to sling balloons full of paint at canvas doors, then sold chances to fire the machines for a buck a shot. It was worth it.
Tai and Chance Phoenix, 3-year-old twins, fired balloons from a makeshift trebuchet, and the master splatterer Pollock would have been proud.
“We just brought them out so they could see some different things, see stuff getting reused and have a little fun,” said the boys' dad, Anthony Phoenix.
And they got to be artists to boot. Some of the speckled canvases will eventually adorn a branch of the Missoula Federal Credit Union, which helped sponsor the event.
“We're going to keep at it until we make some art,” said Mike Baker, who was presiding over the paint hurling. “Who knows when that might be?”
A construction team calling itself Team Sunflower was building an Adirondack chair that used old skis as the slats.
“I can't wait to get done so I can sit down in it and not get back up,” said team member Jerry Schubert.
The construction projects were made using found objects, some of which the teams brought with them, others they scavenged from the Home Resource site.
A group of girls from the Cramer Creek School were building a table that either
A) made use of plumbing or B) would help a plumber. In either case, it was going to be christened a “plumbery.”
“I'm not sure what its function might be, but it probably doesn't matter,” said Francis Pearson, the school's art director.
Which brings us back to the visionaries from Habitat for Humanity.
After an hour or so, the three men had created a reaching, soaring figure that looked like nothing so much as a metal Joshua tree in bloom.
Asked whether they might electrify their creature's lamplike blooms so that they might shine, Chrismon averred.
“I don't think I would trust us with electricity,” said Habitat's executive director. “I really just hope it doesn't fall on anyone.”
Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or at mmoore@missoulian.com.
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