What'd'ya do when you have a baker's dozen of discarded steel bedsprings? Lucy Slivinski, a multi-dimensional artist, recognized that that they could become spokes for a wheel; or a starburst; or a, a what? Slivinski turned to her welding skills to put the bedsprings together, and called it "Ode II." The piece — and it's a large one now resides in a park in Chicago.

Slivinski has produced many pieces of art that are displayed in public places such as parks and on city streets in Chicago and elsewhere, using scrap metal of all sorts to produce thoughtful and eye-catching works that merge with the urban landscapes. Along with the scrap metal, she adds plants as part of her pallet.

She has been a featured artist in the Presidential Court section of downtown Chicago's Grant Park for the past three years. The works are designed as temporary installations, but they also have had to be rugged enough to withstand changing weather and the challenges of being artwork that's unshielded from the public.

Slivinski's first piece in Grant Park was "Natural Reactor," and was built from salvaged chain, 32 pieces of salvaged pipe, and a steel net suspended from the pipe and chain. The piece included a growing garden featuring gourds whose vines grew up the pipes, across the chains and over the screen.

It stayed in place for two years, and then Slivinski disassembled it to make way for her next piece at the site, "The Hedgerow."

That work, produced from salvaged automotive and truck exhaust pipes, was completed in Grant Park in late spring, 2006, and remains there now.

"Welding is immediate and easy and structurally the best thing to do, especially in a public area," Slivinski said in a recent interview.

Slivinski said she has been welding for five years, and gained her welding skills in an automotive welding class at Triton Junior College, in River Grove, Ill.

"I needed to learn how to weld so that my work could grow. I was doing large-scale pieces and was wiring them together," she said. With her work growing larger and larger, she needed welding skills to maintain their structural integrity.

"We learned mostly gas welding in school, and I picked up MIG welding later," she said.

"At first, I thought welding was too precise and too rigid a process, but I found out that wasn't so," Slivinski noted. "With the large, site specific works that are the primary direction of my work, welding often takes precedence as the process I use."

She said she wants her art to be readily recognizable as being made by her hands, and welding helps her to do that, despite initial apprehensions.