The Scissor Move

Trophy sculpture for Create Your Happiness Challenge by megatrophywife.com

By STEPHANIE VOSPERPublished 3 years ago • 3 min read

"Scissor Move"

Hello, I present my Challenge piece: “The Scissor Move!”

My trophy hobby started about a decade ago when I found my husband’s sports trophies in the trash.

He had had them since his school days and he finally decided they must go.

I had other plans for them. I rescued them from certain death, put them all in a box, put the box in the garage and there they sat for the next two years.

One fine day it was time to take action. I took those dozen or so trophies and medals out of the box and after a lot of fiddling and meddling and muddling and puzzling and fiddle dee-dee, fiddlesticks, stickiness and stickability I found myself with a Megatrophy.

That was the start of it. I enjoyed the process so much and the result too. I started keeping an eye out for unwanted trophies lying around. It wasn’t difficult as their glint caught my eye out of nowhere and their goldiness was definitely not lame and their shininess could not be sidelined.

Since that first sculpture, I’ve made nine more and have plans for more to come. I’ve made a chandelier, a lamp, two wheels of futility and other standing sculptures. They’re all different and unique. I get inspired by things I stumble across or that people give me.

Scissors are an essential tool in my work. I use the very fine pair featured to snip and smooth edges of sawn-off trophy parts. I also have a marvelous heavy-duty pair of scissors that cuts through just about anything!

When I first started making my mega trophies I didn’t even know that trophy shops existed. I never really thought about where trophies come from, even though I did win a trophy as a schoolgirl. Trophies are always just there, hanging out on someone’s shelf, glinting of past glories and hinting for attention.

My trophy was a real silver cup that sat proudly next to my father’s silver cup that he won for excellence in pianoforte. I don’t even remember what I won my trophy for, but it wasn’t for excellence in music or sports. Possibly flower arranging or academia. I was fairly studious. Reading is one of my great passions.

Another great passion of mine is art - paintings, sculpture, design, fashion, music, theater, film, jewelry, poetry, photography, graffiti and pop art and on and on - creative expression is wonderful. It's fascinating the way different people will see the same objet d'art completely differently. My love of art springs from deep in my psyche, it’s who I am. I see art everywhere in everything, even in dysfunction, oddity and ugliness.

Perhaps that’s one reason why I’m a happy person. Blissful actually. I was lucky enough to be born with a sunny nature but I went through some difficult stuff in my younger years. I didn’t come into my own until middle age. I started to notice some profoundly positive changes after practicing yoga for about 8 years. I intend to continue yoga forever, it's been 15 years now. A year or so ago I started a meditation practice also. WOW. It’s difficult to describe how joyful I feel every day without sounding ridiculous. I’m so appreciative of all the good, astounding and beautiful things in life and the more appreciative I am the more it compounds until it reaches the realms of daily bliss. Yes, of course I feel sad or annoyed or hurt occasionally, but it’s fleeting and forgotten in moments. Meditation helps you to not only not sweat the small stuff but not sweat the big stuff either.

Anyway, to come back to the whole point of this story - the act of creating is a form of meditation. You get so absorbed in what you are doing you forget everything else and are in the moment. It’s a marvelous feeling. It doesn’t even matter what you are creating as long as you are doing it and it’s making you happy. Other people don’t have to like it. Art is totally subjective; there will always be someone who loves it and someone who hates it and everything in between.