Spider Art

At the Fabulous North we sometimes bring you a lovely hidden gem or a massive write up of a castle, but we're also here to bring you the odd and unusal too.

When pottering around finding all the artwork on the North Shields Mural Trail we saw this huge spider adorning a house and of course had to take a closer look. As we found this one in October we thought it might have been a Halloween decoration, but apparently this is a permanent year round feature.

The story behind the Spider Artwork it is much simpler. The owners revealed that the piece was made by their son who is now in the army. He was previously a welder in the Territorial Army and put those skills to use creating the artwork as a gift for his parents.

The spider is a few metres long and built entirely from repurposed metal parts. The abdomen started life as a Suzuki motorcycle petrol tank. The thorax is a car wheel rim. The legs were once clothes rails. Put together it creates a striking (yet creepy) piece of art that looks like it is climbing across the brickwork.

Maybe better than a burglar alarm or guard dog!

The family decided to mount it on the outside of the house and I can imagine it's been attracting curious looks ever since. What began as a personal project has turned into a tiny landmark of its own and one of the more unusual sights in North Shields.