Whirligig Building Day
On Cricket Island a whirligig is a magical thing. It lets everyone know you are on or about to enter Cricket Island, a land of delight. Everything about a whirligig alerts your senses to the wonder that awaits.
Whirligigs came about as a creation from the wonderful artists at Bunnies By The Bay. It is a unique art piece that perfectly represents Bunnies By The Bay. One of the core values is that everything can be mended even broken hearts. Another core value at Bunnies By The Bay is resourcefulness. We are famous and sometimes infamous for taking things that don’t seem like they can work together and with a little elbow grease create some magic. When creating a whirligig our artists gather what may seem like pieces of broken larger items, or mis-matched pieces and create a wonderfully unique piece of art. The whirligigs of Cricket Island have a theme to remind us of the bunnies of Cricket Island, the sisters playing in the garden or Gram working in her kitchen or sewing room. When examining a whirligig, there is always a bit of whimsy and delight that catches you off guard and brings a smile to your face.
An important aspect of a whirligig is motion. They are created with the goal they will catch wind and create motion as part of their art. We have several whirligigs on our fence at our office and it is a peaceful sound to hear them humming away. If they don’t sound peaceful, it is a good indicator to look up and around to see what storm is brewing outside.
Whirligigs are a special part of Bunnies By The Bay. If you look closely, you saw them in our old location in LaConner, Washington in our fence, in a flower box at the current location, in our FAO Beijing store, and in art at our FAO NYC store, and in many of our books when you see images of the garden and fence between the garden and the water there are whirligigs. Each one is different, each one is hand made, each one as some kind of bunny on it and each one is almost always in motion.
If you want to see some whirligigs being made by one of our master artists, you can view the video here.
This past Friday, Chris Thiess one of our most treasured artists led a class in how to build a whirligigs with some of the other artists and members of our store team. It was a wonderful time of learning, swapping stories about some of the treasures they were combining to make a whirligig, brainstorming about other projects and fun. There are many wonderful things about Bunnies By The Bay, but the art and creativity that flows from Jeanne, Krys and Suzanne to create the environment for other artists to flourish is truly special.
We are teaching more people about whirligigs, because we need more of them. We have two exciting store openings coming in FAO Selfridges and FAO Arnotts. Both will be getting whirligigs. We recently relocated our show in LaConner and there is a need for more whirligigs in our new location as well. It seems there can never be enough whirligigs in our world and we are most certainly okay with that!
Thank you Chris for sharing the knowledge. We look forward to lots more whirligigs in our future.
2 comments
Is there a pattern I can purchase on how to make a whirlygig from bicycle parts? I trash-picked a bike and it would be a perfect opportunity for my husband to help me make one if we knew how to begin. Thank you.
Is there a picture of your old location?