Artist and designer Gary Card has created a slicker than your average sci-fi Christmas spectacle to light up KXFS, double up as a reflection off Regent’s Canal and rival Oxford Street’s Marmite themed illuminations. Here, the creative shows us how to dress up our tree on a budget.
Powered by a Vauxhall Ampera, made mostly out of car parts and wired up to glow like the inside of an engine, Card’s Electric Christmas trumps Trafalgar Square’s fir as tree of 2012, but from someone who’s worked with Lady Gaga, Nick Knight and DSM we’d expect nothing less. We catch up with a Christmassy Card at King’s Cross Filling Station and commission him a slighter smaller but no less impressive project – to make us a bauble. Going along the same lines as the mechanical tree, Gary makes us a tessellating dodecahedron (he thinks). We leave with stars in our eyes and a top tip from the geometric genius himself on how to dress your tree on a budget: “Raid your cupboards! Anything can be decorative - tooth brushes, biscuits, pasta shells, CD’s. A multitude of any one kind of object always looks amazing!”
Text: Felicity Kinsella
Film: Angelo Molinari
