The Gigantic Plywood Art of Henrique Oliveira

Take some old plywood strips and stain them with wood stain. Then start sticking them together. Eventually you might end up with artwork as awesome as this.

Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira uses salvaged wood collected from the streets of São Paulo to create massive scale, site-specific installations with dense layers that twist, curve, bend, and split. Oliveira uses tapumes - which in Portuguese can mean fencing, boarding, or enclosure - as a title for many of his large-scale installations. Henrique's breakthrough occurred when he was a student at the University of São Paulo, where for two years the view from his studio window was a wooden construction fence. Over time Oliveira began to see the deterioration of the wood and its separation into multiple layers and colours. One week before the final student show opened, the construction was finished and the worn out plywood fence was discarded.

Discovered here.

Upcycling Japanese style

This is a fantastic idea.

Kintsugi (or kintsukuroi) is a Japanese method for repairing broken ceramics with a special lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. The philosophy behind the technique is to recognize the history of the object and to visibly incorporate the repair into the new piece instead of disguising it. The process usually results in something more beautiful than the original.

If you’d like to try the technique yourself, Humade offers gold and silver DIY kintsugi kits. There's also a Kintsugi supplies shop on Etsy here. And there's a how to video guide here:



(Spotted at This is Collosal)

Rubbish Art - Supplemental

A few more artists who make art from recycled materials:

Sue Beatrice (website here) makes exquisite artwork from old watch and clock parts. She's a mean sculptor too.

Meanwhile, the mysterious 'Mister Finch' makes plants and animals using vintage fabrics. His website is here.

And then there's Kyle Bean who makes chickens from eggshells, mobile phone Russian dolls from cardboard, and portraits from pencil shavings. The man is a genius.

Motorcycle Gorgeousness - the sculpture of Edouard Martinet

Many artists create art exploring the interplay of the natural and mechanical worlds, and some do so using found objects — but we’ve not come across any who combine the two to create such striking and innovative animal sculptures.

Edouard Martinet has created a menagerie of sculptures including birds, fish, insects and even a frog from found car and bike parts that are remarkably accurate representations. A dragonfly’s wings are made from sections of a wire fence while a red ant has marbles for eyes and an abdomen made from a motorcycle headlamp.

 

 

Martinet does not shy away from the scrapyard origins of his creations, even going so far as to place brand logos on to his sculptures. This nod to the manufactured origins of his work only further prove the skill in piecing together such individualised pieces.

 

A personal favourite is an oversized wasp climbing into a giant glass. It takes a long hard stare to recognise the antennae are arms from a pair of spectacles, the eyes are old watch cases and the legs are made from bicycle chains.

The insects are his strongest works here largely because of the intricate nature of their construction and their scale. Martinet’s sculptures are remarkable works of art and need to be seen up close to recognise just how impressive they are.

Words by Tabish Khan at the Londonist

Edouard Martinet website here

A Case for Upcycling

As much as I quietly loathe car crash neolexic portmanteaus like 'chillax', 'bridezilla' and 'stagflation', today I find myself 'upcycling'. Oh the shame.

Upcycling is the art of recycling a thing into something better. Apparently. That's still recycling in my view. Or repurposing. But, whatever we call it, I've done it. Or, rather, Mrs C has.

She's spent the last couple of days preparing for an upcoming craft fair by making pencil cases and laptop and tablet bags from old off-cuts of material (she is a very experienced and exceptional seamstress and tailor). And it suddenly occurred to me that here was a possible new use for the promotional T Shirt I had printed to wear at fundraising events for my book. The book is now funded, has a different cover and will soon be in the shops so the shirt is redundant ... so the poor thing's future was looking bleak. It would probably end up spattered with paint and plaster or cut up for use as dust cloths. That just seemed ungrateful. Was there an alternative? There was indeed.

The T shirt lives on as my new pencil case - Upcycled and reincarnated. Isn't that cool?

I think so.

Big Fish

I bloody love these; giant fish made from discarded drinks bottles. They're on display at Botafogo beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the UN Conference on Sustainable Development is being hosted.

Photo credit: Victor R. Caivano / AP, Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters

Recycled Into Art - Part 4

Another day and some more art made by recycling waste materials or using inexpensive everyday materials in a new way.

I've been a big fan of Mark Jenkins' street art for some time; his creepily realistic human figures are wonderful. Do have a look at his website and gallery here. But, recently, he's made some pieces by a process of 'guerilla moulding' using nothing more than sticky tape. The results include these curious animals (see below). Want to see how it's done, step by step? Click here.







I saw some art by Dean Patman at the Medici Gallery in London today. He's another artist that cleverly uses household objects to make animal sculptures:

And last, but not least, for today we have Jason Mecier who creates poignant collages and portraits from garbage.







More tomorrow!

Recycled Into Art - Part 3

Giant cows made from dead cars!

Finnish artist Miina Akkijyrkka has been creating these incredible sculptures out of recycled car parts for more than 30 years. Aren't they amazing? (Thanks to my brother Simon for alerting me to them.) Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Next we have Tom Hardwidge's Steampunk 'Arthrobots' made from nuts and bolts and mechanical components:

And Taiwanese food carving artist Huang Mingbo creates extraordinary sculptures like these lobster shell motorcycles:

More tomorrow!

Recycled Into Art - Part 2

Some more artist 'Wombles' - people who create things from found materials and the rubbish that most of us discard. We kick off with the sculptures of Heather Jansch, whose work I saw recently at the Eden Project:

Jean Shin does amazing things with vinyl records, umbrellas and other objects:

Robert Bradford uses thrown away children's toys, clothes pegs, buttons ... anything plastic:

And Subodh Gupta uses scrapped kitchen utensils:

More tomorrow!