Copper Garden Art
Copper garden art is a great way to add modern or vintage flair to your yard, depending on the individual style of the artist. Because copper is a relatively inexpensive medium you can expect to find it at your local farmer's market as well as online. Due to the prominent of lawn ornaments and other accessories for your patio and garden, these pieces can range in size from tall poles to smaller fixtures that can almost blend in with your choice flowers.
The best way to begin to think about where to place a piece of copper garden art in your yard is to consider the various areas that you can place a piece. The numerous options of pieces means you can place them nearly anywhere, but for now we will consider the front and back yards - a garden or two, a water feature, trees and shrubs as well as just simple lawn ornaments.
The first place to tour is the garden. Various pieces of copper garden art can quickly add beauty to a well planned garden. First and foremost you have the tall pieces. These are mounted on a single or tripod based series of spikes that you bury into the ground. Then the piece can hover above your garden for prominent viewing. These pieces are often artistic spirals of both brushed and polished as well as patina pieces of copper. Often animals are placed on the top and weather vanes are a staple. You can also easily place a delicate grouping of copper discs along string as wind vanes in the middle of your garden.
The next most popular place to find copper garden art is at a water feature. These do not have to be overly large. Although some pieces can span large sections of the garden flowing from one end to another in a closed circuit, some pieces are smaller wall ornaments that have a flowing section on water that can hold a relatively small four or five cups of water. The emphasis here is on the flowing nature of the water and the sound it makes as it trickles along the gravitationally lead path. Commonly buckets or pails are used in tiled patterns along a centralized post to give a unique image, but not requiring the placement of several pieces. These represent the "plug and play" mentality of installation.
Next you can have single features that are represented by the artist's design or feature. A common paradox to tackle is the seemingly fluid nature of the copper garden art metal with the obvious inorganic, sturdy staple nature of hardened metal. In this way an artists can show the flow of wind or of water over leaves or other decomposable and malleable materials in the hard medium of the metal. These can be placed by themselves in the center of the yard or more commonly hung on the inside of your fence to facilitate a periodic design on an otherwise ordinary plank or picket fence.
A final consideration is whether or not you expect your piece to weatherize. In almost all instances the protective coating that might be on the exterior of the piece will eventually fall with the changes in humidity and the natural acidity of the rainwater. These same elements will contribute to an oxidization process similar to rust that will add a patina hue to the exterior of any copper. The difference is that while the color of rust is a reddish orange that can vary in intensity, the patina coloration is predominantly green and brown in almost every imaginable organization of hues of the two colors. This can add either an elegant antiquing or a harsh industrialized finish, depending on the goal of the artist and the flow of the piece. Either way you should expect the piece to weatherize with time and not fight it, because it would be fairly tedious to add a new protective finish coat to every piece of copper garden art every month or two.