Turning trash into art has become a trend but it has been around for ages. We used to look down our nose at people who collected trash, now we call them thrifty, green artists. Here is a look at a few artists that create with trash.
Barbara Yates likes to create visually stunning and beautiful statues. Out of dead trees, that is. Barbara is what they call a recycling artist; she breathes new life into dead recycled trees with a chisel and a mallet. Her statues are featured in parks across the globe as far away as Ireland where she was invited to do some carvings in exchange for room and board as their very first wood carver.
Many of her carvings feature animals, people and symbols that are often linked with spirituality, Mother Nature and the goddess. Her work has come to be used in various rituals and ceremonies including one done by full moon on Halloween Eve.
Although by the looks of her gallery much of her work is spiritual it is a pleasant surprise that she branches out into other mainstream avenues. Yates has been hired to carve well loved pets by their owners, small children and even gnomes. All of which display her quirky and whimsical sense of humor. Some of her carvings have even been turned into some very wacky furniture. You can view some of her work on her blog by clicking here.
Danny O’Connor or Danny O as he’s come to be known, a native of Massachusetts is a natural recycler. He loves to collect thing and turn them into evocative pieces of art. In 2005 Danny was credited with being the first person to ever create art using scotch tape. I don’t mean he taped some stuff together I mean he actually used scotch tape to design elaborate line illustrations.
One of his most memorable projects is his collection of 22,000 lost, thrown away, discarded and used balls that he has turned into a variety of murals. According to Danny, the balls always become the same image of a young boy peering through his hands as if he’s looking through binoculars.
The balls themselves when turned into art become a 3D visualization that blows the mind. Each ball no matter how big or small plays an intricate part of the design. See his ball boy here.
Over the course of a few years, Danny managed to clean up a lot of beaches on his walks. He has collected bags and bags of trash that have made their way into his work. His log cabin studio is filled with old comic books, magazines and other odds ands he’s found. The local trash has become his art supply store. And it all started as a meditation walk, he says.
Paul Reimert is a sculptor but unlike most sculptors his materials are far from conventional. When he first started out he hoped to stop people from buying cheesy ceramic statues from the flea market he often worked at.
He began gathering broken pieces of ceramic and started gluing them together with his hot glue gun. Pretty soon his neighbors became fascinated with his talent and started donating their own broken ceramics.
Back then his statues came as he worked on them, fitting one piece after another together to achieve the right formations. Today he has a construction plan and created each statue with an extensive plan. One thing remains constant though; all his materials come from recycled goods.
His statues are lifelike and realistic in spite of the plastics, ceramics and other odd objects they are crafted from. Each of them resembles a human being and uses only texture and poses to convey a message. All men statues are named David because Michael Angelo’s David statue was his first inspiration and it was the beginning of beginnings and all statues came from that inspiration. You can see his collection here.
Found art has become sexy and trendy and is finding its way into Middle America where the artists themselves are average people recycling old junk into new eco-art. These are just a few extraordinary examples of eco-artists but anyone can do this and best of all, it keeps less junk from finding homes in our landfills.
Trashed is a California based organization that uses artistically painted trash bins to change the way people and businesses think of recycling. They want people to talk about the recycle bins in hopes that they will actually recycle their trash. The Trashed program awards artist for painting creative trash bins by displaying the bins as artwork and then later donating the bins or selling them off for a good cause. Get Trashed here.
Support the arts, support the planet, get trashed and recycle.
