SCRAP!

Last Saturday was so much fun! Myself, and a few friends entered the Iron Artist Sculpture Competition put on by Scrap!, School & Community Reuse Action Project. It's a non-profit organization that "inspires creative reuse and environmentally sustainable behavior by providing educational programs and affordable materials to the community".

We entered under the name Pop Color, but everyone under the sun called us Curiosity Group, Mac Force,

 and Pop Culture... whatever. Two of my team mates work for the Curiosity Group. I myself freelance there from time-to-time. Mac Force is Curiosity's sister company, that was nice enough to provide the space to hold the event. So I guess I can understand the confusion... maybe.

Our lovely judges put on quite the half time show! I guess that made up for all the demerits they gave us at check-in!There were a lot of rules and then again, almost no rules at all. The main idea is that you gather a team (only five people working at a time but you can have up to ten teammates), show up with some tools, a secret weapon (a tool or material of your choice) and then build a 3x3x3 sculpture out of materials provided by SCRAP! You are not allowed to see the materials until the start of the competition and you are not allowed to know what the theme is, until right before you start. The theme chosen this year was Alchemy.

The crazy part is that the judges walk around and give you merits or demerits for your conduct, team spirit (or lack there of, in our case - we were forced to come up with a cheer!), or whatever else pops into their heads. In order to avoid this you can bribe your judges. We made the mistake of showing up with no bribes and then spouting off some long-winded spiel about how we do not support bribery and are setting a good example for the rest of our nation. Unfortunately that landed us our first demerit. After that we put in a quick phone call to another teammate to pick up as many gas station bribes he could find. I think we may have gotten a demerit for that as well. At least we got a merit for being "cuties". See them below...

After three hours of blood sweat and tears, the minimum number of team members, no secret weapon, and a lot of demerits, I'd say we came up with a really nice sculpture! The concept here is that you become the Alchemist taking your organic substances, represented on the right, and turning them into a substance of greater value, seen left, as "noble metals".

And the award goes to... Pop Color  for Most Unruly Team and Best Concept.

And, please, let's not forget the BEEFCAKE AWARD, no seriously! Apparently all the judges had a thang for these smokin' hot guys!Good times. See more photos here.