Haitian Metal Art: Video
Some in Haiti find creative ways to survive.
By Kevin Sites, Tue May 2, 5:30 PM ET
Transcript (Kevin Sites voiceover):
So many people in Haiti are desperately poor, and they'll find interesting and creative ways to survive — including making artwork.
Now Francois Andre — he's a 48-year-old man — makes metal sculpture out of 50-gallon metal drums.
He takes the drums and makes them flat, pounding them out with a hammer — It's a really labor intensive and painstaking process — and then creates these beautiful sculptures that are hand painted. And they can include almost anything you can imagine: giraffes, birds, palm trees, very intricate sculptures. Anything you can think of, he can make in metal.
But, he does it all by hand, taking a stencil, laying out the stencil over the flattened metal drum and then drawing out the pattern.
Drawing the pattern is the easy part. The hard part is punching out the metal. No machines are used here in the process. It's all done by hand, and it takes about a week to complete a project. But it's drawn out and then pounded out, painstakingly. Each of the little patterns are done by hand and the completed project can be quite elaborate and beautiful.
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