4bysix teapot

I was invited by Boris Bally to create a piece for an exhibition and auction that will be happen in London as a part of the work done by 4BYSIX. Boris sent me an aluminium panel from a double decker bus and I made the teapot shown above.  The teapot is cast aluminum and the lid and the handle were CNC machined. This was a really fun piece to create. I was super pleased with how this turned out. I love working on projects like this because I get a chance to problem solve around a solution for integrating a theme or a material into a project. It's like having an assignment in school again, and I get to bounce up against the constraints that are defined for me.  Anyway, it was fun to create and it'll be fun to see if someone buys it via the auction.

For more on 4BYSIX and what they do:

We are 4BYSIX, a community interest company using creative means to support the disadvantaged communities of London. Using waste material from London's disused double decker buses, we provide artists with unique canvases to create art on. Through auctions and exhibitions, their work goes on to fund social projects across the city.

Our exhibitions host artists from all over the world, in galleries in London, New York, and Hong Kong. Their subsequent auctions fund our on-going and future projects, such as our partnerships with the New Horizon Youth Center or Spedal. One of our recent projects, F.C. HOPE, is a football team for young adults with difficult living situations, giving disadvantaged boys and girls the structure and support of team sports.

We are using our love of art as a conduit to bring attention to those who need it most, extending the systems of the art industry to those typically left out; ensuring that more than just the collector benefits from art. From young painters in Haiti to artists collected by the world’s most notable institutions, we are trying to make sure that the art world is for everyone. This includes supporting everyone working in the artistic process; seeing that everyone from handlers, interns, and the artists themselves get paid for their work. Unfortunately, creativity seems to be gate kept to the privileged, only taken seriously in well funded schools, expensive universities, museums, and untouchable galleries. By further opening up the conversation we hope to involve the unexpected creativity of everyone around us, as we think that’s the only way of solving London's biggest issues.

The more art we share, the more good we can do. By giving panels to international artists we are sharing visual culture between countries, enriching London with the artist's inspirations from a city on the other side of the world. Showing an artist in London both bolsters their credence and gives us new ways of seeing the world. Conversely, when we get to show physical pieces of London in other cities, Hong Kong or New York for example, we are returning the favor; sharing snippets of our visual iconography in hopes that it may give inspiration to others. Street art reflects the cities in which it inhabits, and it is for this reason that it frequently finds its way atop our bus panels. From street to street, the bus panel gives us a cyclical way of sharing culture through art.

At 4BYSIX, sustainability is a significant part of our process. We want to ensure that the work we are doing now leaves only positive effects on the future. This means we are responsible with our carbon emitting actions as well as our social actions toward prosperous and long-lasting communities. Find our complete sustainability statement here.

We could have brought value to the world in a million different ways with 4BYSIX, but in the end it is a reflection of what we love. We love art, we love up-cycling, and we love helping people, and so this is what 4BYSIX is at the moment. But 4BYSIX is only a framework; it is a framework that can change with our interests and the needs of the community, and will continually evolve so that we can best share the love.