“Art teachers have always used found materials,” Marilyn Brackney said.  “Budgets for art materials are slim, and late in the semester funds are gone. Teachers had to fall back on free supplies.”

Brackney speaks from experience. A trained artist and art educator, she lives in Columbus, Indiana, where she taught in local public schools. In 1988 her budget for art supplies was reduced from $1,000 to $250 for the semester, so she collected discarded items to reuse as art materials. Then she had to figure out projects for them that would interest her elementary through high school students.

While developing her course, she listed each material (e.g., aluminum cans, calendar pictures, latex house paint ) along with step-by-step instructions for each activity.

To share these ideas, her husband, who was director of  technology for the Columbus school system, created a website, The Imagination Factory. The Trash Matcher section pairs each waste material with an illustrated art/recycling “how-to” activity.  It’s a great help to teachers planning classes and parents figuring out what to do with children unexpectedly housebound for an afternoon. The site has been visited by millions of people.

The Imagination Factory website is a family project. The Brackneys' daughter, author Susan Brackney, created the logo.

During her classes Brackney talks about landfills and the need to reuse materials to raise the students’ awareness of the environment. She created Trashasaurus Rex, a 300 pound dinosaur, 9 1/2 feet tall by 11 feet long, made entirely of household rubbish, in protest to a court ruling that forced Indiana to accept trash from the East Coast although their local landfills were almost all filled up. After exhibiting it in Indiana and Florida to raise awareness, she donated it to the Rocky Mount Children’s Museum of North Carolina.

No longer teaching in the public schools, Brackney holds private classes in her home and updates the website with new projects and ideas. She also curates and mounts exhibits created with reused materials — the  Deja Vu Fine Art and Crafts Show — held periodically in Columbus.

In honor of Super Bowl Week 2012,  Brackney was asked to create Tree Cozies to decorate the downtown area of Columbus, an hour from the stadium in Indianapolis. With the help of 32 young volunteers, the group created Super Kids from old and spare mittens, stuffed with fibers from an old pillow.

Super Kids decorations made from odd mittens in honor of the Super Bowl.

Another Indiana art educator, Joe LaMantia, who lives in Bloomington, aims to demystify art, developing projects with communities and schools that they can work on as a group.  He offers “a holistic approach to creating art that’s shaped for each unique cultural setting” with children, parents, families and staff to encourage their imagination. The adults help in assembling the framework for each project, which are usually made with reused materials.

Originally studying to be an architect, LaMantia has picked up a variety of skills in several art careers: He taught art therapy in an adult day care center, spent years as a dimensional illustrator for magazines and publications and helped install exhibits in Boston at the Institute of Contemporary Art and MIT art gallery before carving out his niche as an educator and collaborative, public artist.

For example, when his daughter’s school was moving to a new building, LaMantia approached the principal and suggested that they use materials from the old school for art in the new school.  With the school’s support, he secured funding from the state and city; eventually more than 30 organizations donated money and services.

The result, completed in 2010, is a 12-foot-tall head of a cat — based on a drawing by a fourth grader — made from recycled and new steel. Cat parts are made from recycled steel and aluminum:  The aluminum lettering comes from signage of the old school; the aluminum mouth comes from the old fire escape, the cast iron nose comes from a metal fire door that had these cast iron rollers and the whiskers come from recycled reinforcement rods from a local scrape yard. To make this as inclusive as possible, all the children, teachers  and adults of the school put their handprints on the cat which in turn gave a texture that looks like fur. The project involved about 350 people: students, parents and the immediate community.

Cat made from recycled steel, outside the Artful Learning Center in Bloomington, Indiana.

As Artist in Residence, LaMantia helped a school in Indianapolis build The Villagers’ Bell Tower to commemorate 80 villagers who settled the school’s neighborhood in the late 1800s. Each bell includes a historic or cultural reference to the original settlement.

LaMantia, who has also developed community projects in Kentucky, Illinois, Oklahoma and Minnesota, continues to raise public awareness of the environment while creating an opportunity to work as a community, one unique project at a time.

For more information, visit his website.

I love to both travel and listen to my friends talk about their trips — especially those taken by artist WC-P and her husband, WP, who is an expert with electronics and machines as well as a connoisseur of old cars. The couple only drive vintage cars which WP has renovated. He spent four months restoring a comfortable, roomy 1989 Grand Marquis station wagon which they drove from Arlington, Virginia to visit the iconic Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas on their vacation in 2007.

Forty years ago, Amarillo billionaire Stanley Marsh lll wanted to create a piece of public art that would baffle the locals. In 1974 he supported a proposal by a group of San Francisco artists known as the Ant Farm to develop a tribute to the evolution of the Cadillac’s tail fin. The artists drove 10 different Cadillac models into one of his fields along Route 66 west of Amarillo, and then half-buried them, hood down, in the dirt — supposedly at the same angle as the Great Pyramid of Gaza. The cars faced west in a line, their tail fins displayed for all to see.

Often-decorated Cadillacs displayed at Cadillac Ranch.

WP visiting the Cadillac Ranch with obligatory supplies -- camera and spray paint -- in hand.

Marsh and the artists watched what happened next. People visited the cars and defaced them or tore off pieces as souvenirs; the tail fins disappeared. Stripped to their frames and splattered with spray paint, the Cadillacs are still on display for large numbers of international tourists who arrive with spray paint and cameras. Adding their graffiti, they ask others to take pictures of them, before someone else comes by and repaints it.

Unfortunately, other tributes to the whole American car have not fared as well.

Spindle, a 1989 sculpture, was located in a shopping center parking lot in Berwyn, Illinois. Commissioned by the center’s owner from sculptor Dustin Shuler, it consisted of eight cars — including the owner’s BMW — impaled on a 50-foot spike. The sculpture’s foundation extended 30 feet into the ground and cost $75,000 to install.

Spindle became both a tourist attraction — it was featured in the film, Wayne’s World, and in the syndicated comic strip, Zippy the Pinhead — and a source of civic controversy.  Some citizens petitioned the mayor to remove it while the mayor claimed it attracted more business to the town. In 2007 it was removed when the shopping center site was redeveloped and nobody ponied up the  $350,000 needed to relocate it.

"Spindle" as it once appeared as a sculpture in Berwyn, Illinois' shopping center.

A 1987 family reunion produced Carhenge in a field outside Alliance, Nebraska, where farmer Jim Reinders has constructed a unique memorial to his father.

While living in England, Reinders had studied the structure and proportions of the ancient Stonehenge. Instead of using massive stones for his monument, however, Reinders arranged 38 vintage American cars, all covered with grey spray paint, in a 95-foot diameter circle. Some sit upright, trunk-end down, in pits nearly five feet deep, with other cars welded on top to form arches. Other automobile sculptures have been added to the Carhenge location over the years.

Carhenge was listed as one of Time magazine’s Top 50 American Roadside Attractions and was featured in the 2007 travel book, 1,000 Places to See in the USA and Canada Before You Die.

"Carhenge," a megalith built on a farm outside Alliance, Nebraska.

"Carhenge" (detail).

The site, visited by 80,000 people a year, is now run by the nonprofit Friends of Carhenge, which does not charge admission; the grounds are open all day, every day.

The Friends no longer have resources to expand the site and have put it up for sale for $300,000. If the group does not find a buyer, President Marcia Buck said the Friends will continue to care for it, including maintenance of these non-moving vehicles. Unlike Cadillac Ranch, when parts fall off, they are put back in place.

“The damn things break down even when they are struck in the ground,” Buck said.

In December, when I was buying Christmas presents at a wonderful local upscale gift shop that doesn’t usually carry Art-Eco products, I was surprised to see clocks, brooches and a mirror made with discarded metal bottle caps.

Almost since the invention of the “crown cork” in the 19th century, bottle caps have provided an inexpensive and abundant source of art supplies once they’ve been separated from the beverage container.

Bottle-cap art has been popular since the 1940s, because they were inexpensive and relatively plentiful. We are now seeing more modern artists experimenting with bottle caps as recycled materials have become almost mainstream.

L. "Bottle Cap Basket" made from bottle caps c.1940. Photo courtesy of The Ames Gallery. R. "Bottle Cap Basket/Sculpture" handmade from bottle caps, gold paint, metal armature with lid bottom. From coastal Georgia. c. 1940-60. Photo courtesy of the Acacia Collection.

Clarence and Grace Woolsey began making bottle-cap figures in 1961 when they were employed as farmhands in Iowa,–reportedly to make use of a gallon of bottle caps they had accumulated. Over the course of a decade, they created several hundred sculptures. Discouraged by lack of public interest in their work, the couple stopped making them and stored them in a barn owned by Grace’s brother. The figures were discovered 20 years later when the farm was auctioned in 1993.

"Untitled Figures" by Clarence and Grace Woolsey. Photo courtesy of the American Folk Art Museum.

In the late 20st century, painter and web designer John Boak has decorated hand-built kitchen cabinets in his mountain cabin with bottle-cap medallions. The proliferation of microbreweries has provided caps in a wide array of colors which he stores, by color, in old soda bottles.

John Boak's bottle-cap cabinet medallions. Photos by John Boak.

Want to try your hand at this?  Boak shows the rest of us how to do this on his website.

Greg Warmack, aka Mr. Imagination, is a contemporary self-taught artist who worked as a street artist before he was shot during a robbery. After waking up from a coma in the hospital, he had a new vision and began working exclusively with found objects. Now his work can be found in private collections and museums throughout the world.

"Bottlecap Figure with Mirror" by Mr. Imagination. This figure is two feet tall and has an elongated mirror in its center. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In addition to creating found art and sculpture which is exhibited throughout the country, Michelle Stitzlein teaches workshops for children about creating sculpture from bottlecaps, and other found materials. Both facets of her career require large quantities — more than any one person can provide. “90% of my caps are donated from family, friends and strangers who have heard about my work with kids,” she said. “They do take up a considerable area of studio space. Maybe 16 feet.”

Stitzlein's students show their work made with plastic bottlecaps. Photo by Michelle Stitzlein.

There few “how to” books about creating art with caps.  Stitzlein has written two.  Her newest, Cool Caps!, designed for teachers, parents and children, contains 7 projects made with recycled plastic bottle caps. It is available for sale on Lulu.

British artist Susan Stockwell crafts her works from recycled materials – maps, money, computer parts.

“A Chinese Dream” is a world map quilted from that country’s currency by Susan Stockwell. At right: detail showing individual bills.

Wall hanging, “Afghanistan, A Sorry State,” is made from U.S. dollars by Susan Stockwell. At lower right: detail showing bills and stitching.

Stockwell says her works are shaped by a dialogue with her materials. She trained as a sculptor, but early in her career began using paper for the practical reasons that it was cheap and readily available. Then she drew on the dressmaking skills handed down from her mother and grandmother to design political fashion statements: Gowns from the British Colonial period made from maps of the Empire.

Full size “Colonial Dress” made from world maps by Susan Stockwell.

From there, the leap to a dress stitched up from obsolete British banknotes was a short one, followed quickly by maps created from other currencies.

Full size “Money Dress.”

Stockwell began working with discarded computer parts after a year-long residency in Taiwan in 2007 opened her eyes to the importance of recycling to the island’s economy. She created and recycled a piece called Freefall from literally tons of discarded electronic components.

“Taipai Stack” (foreground) and “Freefall” (background) by Susan Stockwell at the Hong's Foundation, Taipai, Taiwan.

“Flood” by Susan Stockwell.

Flood by Susan Stockwell consisted of a tower of computer components pouring from the roof of the church, into the nave–filling it with colorful pieces of metal and wire. It was temporarily installed for a four-month exhibit at York St. Mary’s. a medieval church re-created as an exhibit space for contemporary work in England.

Stockwell has reinterpreted the work in several locations, including a deconsecrated 13th century church in York, to help people consider how ubiquitous electronics have become in modern life — and the problems associated with dealing with them once they become obsolete.

Ptolemy Elrington is a British sculptor who “makes representations of natural forms from recycled or reclaimed materials.” It seems he hasn’t found any scrap metal he couldn’t transform into a wondrous form. He created giant creatures from hubcaps and old shopping carts (some were fished out from local rivers and canals).

Hubcap Fish by Ptolemy Elrington. Photo by the artist.

Insect made from shopping cart. Photo by Ptolemy Erlington. A large sculpture can take up to 200 hubcaps.

 He made an 8-foot-tall statue of Queen Elizabeth ll from old/returned and broken cooking utensils and kitchen equipment.

Ptolemy's statue of Queen Elizabeth ll which was commissioned to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Queen's wedding to Prince Phillip.

Recently he created a samurai from 1 mm stainless strips donated by Ernst and Young. The accounting firm “decommissioned a structure in their HQ in London and wanted the materials to be used artistically rather than melted down,” Elrington said. “The bamboo-like color on some of the strips is actually remnants of the adhesive that was used to bind the strips to a wooden form. I used the different sides of the metal to get the effects I wanted.”

Samurai by Ptolemy Erlington. Photo by the artist.

His new scrap bird is made out of bits of old cars “If you look closely you can work out a wing in the wing (so to speak) and a number on the breast of the bird is 206 from a part of an old Peugeot,” he said. The whole thing is mounted on a reclaimed steel girder.

Ptolemy's Scrap Bird.

Cannot wait to see what he conjures up next. To see more of Ptolemy’s work, visit his website and our article about him in the Recycling Rag.

San Francisco artist Tuan Tran has never met a piece of trash he couldn’t use to create art. His palette includes old ping-pong balls, baseballs, telephone wire, glass medicine bottles, compact discs, nail polish containers —and more to come, in our throw-away society. Using cast-off materials “makes me feel good,” he said.

Tuan, a credentialed Ikebana teacher for 25 years who has lectured throughout the world on the art of Japanese flower arranging, said he liked to bring surprising elements to his arrangements. He has been creating art from found materials for six years and said that combining recycled materials to “create visions of beauty is not unlike Ikebana, the ancient Japanese tradition of arranging natural materials such as flowers branches, rocks …”

 Here are a few examples of Tuan’s varied styles:

Ping Pong Baseball by Tuan Tran.

Detail of Ping Pong Baseball, constructed of images of players from baseball cards laminated on ping-pong balls, which are then wrapped in thread.

Tuan Tran’s Copper Camillia is made of two layers of recycled copper wire with a camellia woven from recycled copper and brass in the center.

Recently, Tuan began creating dresses from recycled telephone and electrical wire; some include recycled ribbon and lights. They can be used as sculptural art although some pop stars have been spotted wearing them.

Handwoven wire dresses by Tuan Tran.

Visit Tuan Tran’s website to see more of his work and learn about his next fashion show in on September 24.

Patchwork quilts long ago elevated recycling to an art form. Scraps of fabric, collected from worn-out clothing or other sources, are creatively repurposed into practical covers that also preserve the significance of the original materials. Quilts can use shapes and colors to tell a specific story, or can serve as the starting point for personal memories and storytelling.

Quilter examining her quilt’s backing, made from a sari. Photo by Henry Drewel.

A traveling exhibition shares the story of the Siddi people through 32 colorful patchwork quilts, known as kawandi. Descendants of East African slaves, sailors and merchants who came to the western coast of India beginning in the 16th century, the Siddi live in the highlands of the Karantaka and Goa regions.

The kawandi are generally geometric, with strips of fabric spiraling into the center of the quilt. They can be accented with religious symbols – either crosses or crescents – and bits of sparkly thread.

Quilt by Khatumbi Muzacar, 2008, 55” x 43”

“Soulful Stitching: Patchwork Quilts by Africans in India,” co-curated by scholars Henry John Drewal  and Sarah K. Kahn, opened in New York and is now installed at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco, through Sept. 18, 2011. This is the first time kawandi have been seen outside of India, where Drewal says they are little known beyond the Siddi communities themselves.
 
According to Drewal, who first discovered kawandi on his travels to India in 2004, the quilts are traditionally made by Siddi women for their children and grandchildren to keep them warm during the cool monsoon season.

Quilt by Bibijan (senior), 2005-'06, 51.5” x 35”

The quilts in the exhibition were made by members of the nonprofit Siddi Women’s Quilting Cooperative, which also benefits from the sale of quilts through Drewal’s website.

A designer friend once said her biggest challenge is how to use what’s at hand. I find it applies to everything from fixing up furniture found in the street to inventing meals with refrigerator leftovers.

For example, rural craftspeople of earlier generations created long-lasting furniture, signs and a whole range of practical items from the abundant supply of free materials all around them — twigs and sticks.

And now twigs are becoming a medium for artists who invent new techniques to express their ideas. Paul Schick began creating twig wall hangings and room dividers in 1987. His work has since been installed in hotels, restaurants, health clubs and private art collections. 

Room divider by Paul Schick.

Wall hanging by Paul Schick.

Combining a love of nature with his carpentry skills, Patrick Dougherty began teaching himself primitive construction techniques by experimenting with tree saplings. He started with conventional small pieces standing on a base and evolved into weaving truckloads of tree branches and saplings to create monumental site-specific installations. He has built over two hundred sculptures standing throughout the world. 

“Standby,” an installation at the Raleigh-Durham Airport by Patrick Dougherty. 2000.

“Crossing Over,” an installation at the American Craft Museum, New York. 1996.

Dougherty explains how he works in this video.

To learn more about Patrick Dougherty and his work, check out his book, “Stickwork” and his website.

Visit Paul Schick’s website to see more of his organic art.

Art made from leftovers is popping up all over  — in local art shows and curated museum exhibits alike — and not just those dedicated to found art. Art Eco — paintings on discarded doors, sculptures from worn-out tires and the like that keep used materials out of the waste stream — is becoming a movement in its own right.

An artist in Jacksonville, Florida, is offering his neighbors the chance to become part of the movement by donating old doors, windows, paneling, table tops or building materials headed for the trash to become a “new and different canvas” for his work — and to make the city “a cleaner and more interesting place to live.”

A month-long art show at a scrap yard in Fort Collins, Colorado, recently took the idea a step further, auctioning the art made from recycled building materials to support its efforts to divert more building materials from the landfill.

“Record Flower” by Rachel Chaplin. Mixed media.

If an art show in a scrap yard sounds unusual, ReSource Yard is not your usual scrap yard. A division of the nonprofit Center for ReSource Conservation in Boulder. The Yard accepts donations of reusable building materials from homeowners, businesses, contractors and deconstructors, then resells them to the public at affordable prices, to keep them out of the local dump.

“Shutter Eye Land” by Chris Bates. Pen-and-ink print on louver door.

To help support the mission, more than 30 local artists contributed 82 pieces fashioned from reclaimed, reused and repurposed materials for the show in the Yard’s offices. The works were then sold in a silent auction.

The items in this second ReVisions show ranged from jewelry made from broken guitar strings and coasters that were vinyl records in a former life to sculptures made from plumbing supplies and large-scale paintings on window shutters obtained from ReSource.

The closing gala was held on July 1 at New Belgium Brewing Co. in Fort Collins. The brewer of Fat Tire Ale and sponsor of the nationwide Tour de Fat bicycle events was a logical place for the auction, because the company is dedicated to sustainable practices like using wind power and composting the materials left over from beer-making. A $5 donation to ReSource scored a commemorative pint glass with two refills in the tap room, and the event sold out the 280 glasses available. A final tally of the amount raised to support ReSource will be available at the end of the month.

Sayaka Kajita Ganz, a world citizen, was born in Japan and spent her early childhood there. While growing up, she moved to different countries and currently lives in Indiana. After studying art at Indiana University in Bloomington, she earned an MFA in 3D Studies with a concentration in sculpture from Bowling Green State University in 2008.

Sayaka Kajitz Ganz and “Wayne,” a sculpture made from discarded plastic cutlery.

As a child, she was affected by the Shinto belief that all objects and organisms have spirits, and that objects discarded before their time weep at night inside the trash bin. This notion has led to her sympathy for cast-offs.

“Emergence” – a two piece installation consisting of “Night” and “Wind.”

Detail of “Night.”

“I create organic forms with thrift-store plastics,” she said. She wants each object to “transcend its origins by being integrated into the form of an animal or some other organism that seems alive and in motion.” An inspired transformation of trash into art. 

“Gemini.” Various scrap metal pieces.

“Fogo.” Reclaimed (mostly red and orange plastic) objects.

For more information, visit Ganz’s website.