Artist Andrew Logan is probably best known as the founder, organizer, host, and hostess (he wears a costume split down the middle) of the Alternative Miss World, a "surreal art event for all-round family entertainment" he started 45 years ago in London.

Since then, he and a team of volunteers, including longtime partner Michael Davis, have staged a dozen more events for contestants of "any species, any size" competing in a dog-show-and-TV-beauty-pageant inspired dress-up party of daywear, swimwear, and eveningwear judged on "poise, personality, and originality." This longstanding celebration of transformation, imagination, and adult silliness is well-documented in the highly entertaining 2011 film The British Guide to Showing Off.

Some contestants -- many of whom are Logan's friends and family -- return year after year. Better known participants, serving as contestants or judges, have included film director Derek Jarman, artist Grayson Perry, and musician Brian Eno.

Logan is also a prolific visual artist who transforms metals, plaster, glass, and thrift-store finds into objects of "happiness and joy" in his U.K. studio with blue-collar dedication and eccentric flair. His works include large commissioned monuments, portraits of close friends, and wearable sculptures we might call jewelry. In the 1990s, he set up a small permanent display of his work in a remote part of Wales.

On Thursday, March 9, Logan will speak on his artistic adventure, the Alternative Miss World, and his "little museum" at the Michigan Theater as part of the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

Q: What first drew you to sculpture and making these fantastical things that you make, and what keeps you going?
A: I started making objects in my last two years of college, and my path was set.

Q: What were those first objects like?
A: I have one of the very early pieces that I made and it was called Homage to Megrit. It's basically a little prince, about two foot tall, covered in marble fablon, which is that plastic stuff, and on it sits a mannequin's bust. I studied architecture and my fellow students were using the bust. They lived in the country and they were using it as a target, so they were shooting it. So it had these wonderful explosions all over it. I rescued it and I painted clouds inside with blue sky and a little grass, so when you look inside the bust you see this little landscape.

The other one that's also in the museum is the Wave Pillar. We had something called "jumble sales" in the U.K., which were held in local church halls. I used to collect a lot of things, and one of the things I collected was a 1930s pink shell light. It was cast pink glass in the shape of a shell with a light in it. I got some cardboard and some UHU glue, and I had this mirror, and I took [the shell light] out into the road and smashed it, and then stuck it on this mirror, so it expanded the light enormously.

These are some of the first objects. When I came to London, I partook in an exhibition called "Ten Sitting Rooms" at the Institute of Contemporary Art. There were 10 of us, and we were given 100 pounds each and told to make an environment. Mine was all artificial grass everywhere. I had a sleeping horse as a [sofa]. I had a waterfall with huge flowers as lights and a coattail cabinet covered in artificial grass. Basically, I was bringing the country to the city.

Q: There's a lot of glass and reflective surfaces in your work. When and why were you first drawn to glass as a medium and what is its significance to you?
A: I was drawn to glass first because it glittered and now because it is a material of the cosmos and reflects universal light.

Q: Does spirituality play a role in your work, then?
A: Even though I do portraits and objects and all sorts of things, they're all very spiritual. I don't really do drawings for my sculptures. Everything comes from the cosmos. It just comes swinging down through space right down to my little studio, where I'm sitting waiting for answers, and they're given to me and I start work. I work virtually every day.

Q: I understand you've been traveling in India. What brought you there?
A: [Fashion designer] Zandra Rhodes brought me to India in 1982 and I’ve been going back every year since. I share a house in Goa. It's beautiful and warm. England is extremely cold and dark and wet, so I escape the winters. And I do a workshop in Jaipur for a week. It's called the Wonderful Workshops. I do something called "sparkling surfaces," and they also do miniature painting and cooking and [textiles] dying. Jaipur is the center of textiles and jewelry and things in India. It's called "The Pink City."

Q: It sounds like you have a lot of opportunities to work there. What other projects of note are you working on now?
A: I completed a large one last year for the new Mumbai Airport. It's a 45-foot-long installation. A friend of mine, Rajeev Sethi, has curated about 1.5 kilometers of art in this airport. It's designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architects. It's very beautiful. But in it are these canyons of art, of which I have a piece. It's called The Guardian Angels of India. It's basically those that sort of formed India, so Ghandi and Satyajit Ray, Ravi Shankar, Krishnamurti. They're these wall portraits that I do. This year I'm possibly working on a mobile for a hotel in Aros City, which is next to the Delhi Airport.

Q: Talking about public art, you once said, "Contemporary art is very clever, but it just leaves me cold … what we need is joy, which is what my work is about." Why do you think so little joy is expressed in public art?
A: Interest in most public sculptures is formed by committees. The committees are usually people who are very involved in the art market world, certainly in this country. I never thought the markets were very joyous. We have a few years on this earth, we should be celebrating it, not fighting and doing everything everyone does. It's a bit wrong, really. Anyhow, that's my message.

Q: That celebration plays really well into this happening you've been doing with the Alternative Miss World. I'm not sure if you really compare it to Andy Warhol, but I see Warhol's happenings as being a little colder and yours being more inclusive.
A: I think in a way you're right; I mean, I do come from that period. I used to go and visit Andy in the '70s when I used to go to New York. Very much so, I think it's that feeling that he was much colder. That didn't really interest me.

Q: What keeps the Alternative Miss World interesting? You've done it all these years and you have another one planned for next year.
A: It won't be done till I die. I think I'll be carried out on a stretcher or something, still as host and hostess. It's just a magic event. There's no rehearsal, so you never know how it's going to turn out. It's always only for one night, so it's really six-month's work for only one night. I create all the alternative crown jewels, and I find the venue, but there are lots of people involved and no one ever gets paid, really. It's always just done purely for the joy of living.

Q: What do you have planned? Do you have a theme?
A: I do have a theme: "Psychedelic Peace." I thought peace was a good one. I usually have these themes, and I thought this was a bit needed. It will be held at Shakespeare's Globe. The actual dates are yet to be confirmed.

Q: One scene that struck me in The British Guide to Showing Off is when someone suggests more celebrity involvement in the event, and you stand your ground, saying it has always been about real people. Why is that so important to you?
A: The people who have always been involved in the event are not there because they're a celebrity; it's because of what they are, what they do. They could be a celebrity, but that doesn't mean anything to me or to the event. People would suggest I get a celebrity to raise the profile of the event, and every time I tried I would come across this brick wall, and rather unpleasant as well, and I thought, "Life's too short for this. I don't want any of that."

Q: How has the Alternative Miss World adapted to changes in society over time?
A: It's always remained constant in its approach. It's just fascinating. Logistically, things like finding a venue, which in the '70s was extremely easy, now it's more and more difficult to find. I've always tried to change the venue every time. It sort of comes down to practical things.

Q: But on the inside you're trying to maintain a certain timelessness.
A: Definitely timeless. That just comes by the nature of how I put the event on and everything. Some of the early ones could be now. You can't really identify dates as such.

Q: Why do you think it endures so well?
A: People never forget it. The children of people who entered the first one have entered and even their children are now involved. It's just passing from generation to generation. It's so fleeting; it's just those few hours, and everyone remembers it. Whether it's for good or for bad is another matter, but they never forget it.

Eric Gallippo is an Ypsilanti-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to Concentrate Ann Arbor.

Andrew Logan appears at the Penny Stamps Speaker Series, presented by the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, at the Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty, on Thursday, March 9 at 5:10 pm. The event is free.