Category Archives: Recycled Art

Art created with recycled materials

Wishes/Lies/Dreams, Alison Stigora and Jay Walker at 1616 Walnut Street

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Wishes/Lies/Dreams, Alison Stigora and Jay Walker

Wishes/Lies/Dreams, Alison Stigora and Jay Walker

Alison Stigora has created large scale installations for the Crane Arts Center Icebox Gallery, Skybox and Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts. For those projects she gleaned the forests to find logs to scorch black then arrange in flowing meditative assemblages arranged like a flood of logs through large spaces. By concentrating on wood her attention would naturally be drawn to paper products in the urban environment. Philadelphia has fallen wood but not enough to build an Alison Stigora sculpture, at 1616 Walnut Street she shows how recycling materials can expose the spark of enlightenment she experienced when she wanted to make art. The crystalized idea culminates in a structure that transforms the trash we create into something as luxurious and lustrous as gold.

Read the interview at the new www.DoNArTNeWs.com

Photograph by DoN Brewer.

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Upcycling Trash to Treasure

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Philadelphia Dumpster Divers

Philadelphia Dumpster Divers at Famous 4th Street Deli for their 25th Anniversary, January 10th, 2012.

Exhibit: The Dumpster Divers of Philadelphia:

Main Line Unitarian Church, Fireside Gallery, 816 S. Valley Forge Road, Devon, PA

January 5 – February 10, 2013

Opening reception: Saturday, January 5, 4-7 pm

Regular gallery hours are 9:00 to 4:30 Mon thru Fri and 9:00 to 2:00 on Sunday. Go to www.mluc.org for more information. 

Over 20 “Dumpster Divers” from this imaginative group of found object artists are exhibiting in this delightful and inspiring exhibit in the Fireside Gallery at Main Line Unitarian Church. The Dumpster Divers exhibit their upcycling art as a group and individually, all with unique visions for their work. They meet monthly to share trash-picked finds, art-making stories, flea market news, and socialize with their fellow art eccentrics. The environmental impact of reused materials is “Ecologically Correct,” but it is through their diverse visions that the Dumpster Divers make a large impact. Transformation of society’s trash to create meaning and beauty is achieved through the eyes of these artists. Their artwork is as diverse as the group and materials used, all of it engaging, often playful, sometimes political, ironic, and definitely captivating! Please join us for the

OPENING RECEPTION Saturday, January 5, 2013, 4-7 pm, including artist talks.

Photograph by DoN Brewer.

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House Gallery – Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

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House Gallery - Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

House Gallery – Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

Renny Molenaar‘s solo show at House Gallery is mind-blowing, DoN asked the artist about the installation, “I’m a compulsive collector. All of the pieces in the show are inspired by repetition of color. I was playing with the Puerto Rican artist Miguel Pinero, the book Short Eyes, the first Puerto Rican play on Broadway, a movie came out after that. He was one of the writers for Miami Vice. He has a line where he’s talking about junkies that mentioned different kinds of rainbows in different color schemes. And I love that line, it’s fascinating. Brown rainbows and gray rainbows and vertical rainbows. And then I started doing rainbows with crack vials.”

House Gallery - Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

House Gallery – Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

“I was living in the South Bronx and I had just read Langston Hughes, where he’s talking about heroin pussy, this is crack pussy, and I was doing rainbows with them and I started noticing garbage becomes a narrative, garbage becomes a story. So I started collecting garbage that attracted me, that told a story…I became very attracted to things that have color. Or I added color, so I did a show in Maine and I did an installation of rocks covered in fabric, just to experiment, it was funny. I came back to New York, and I was invited to do a show ‘at a gallery’ and I wanted more rocks.”

“So I’m in the South Bronx and I tried to look for rocks and there is no rocks in the South Bronx. So, I found crack vials, I found mufflers, the mufflers are on top of the piano. This is terrible. That’s where the mufflers come up…they’re more common in the street than rocks. So I covered them in different colored fabric.”

House Gallery - Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

House Gallery – Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

House Gallery - Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

House Gallery – Renny Molenaar, Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections

Stacks Piles Accumulations Collections is disturbing and amazing with works made from crack lighters, crack bags and vials, found objects and fabric-bombed car mufflers leaving the question of the complicity of the petro-chemical industry in the distribution of drugs in the city all in a sweet rainbow of seductive color.

House Gallery, 1816 Frankfort Ave., Philadelphia PA.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

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Lilliana Didovic, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Lilliana Didovic, Kater Street, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club is 121 unique works of art using every sort of media imaginable from traditional magazine rip-outs to Swarovsky crystals. The tradition of the art gallery is to hang every entry, this show was open to non-members, and then awards are selected from the entire show. This policy offers new artists a place to show along side more established ones but usually the quality is high, prize winners can be first time artists or art veterans. The collage show is fun and quirky, with Dada-esque ready-mades and Dali-inian surrealism, sculptures and photo-montages, micro to macro, the ground is evenly covered with eye catching extravagance.

Lindsey Dickson, Earth Angel, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Lindsey Dickson, Earth Angel, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Alan J. Klawans, Bill Myers, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Alan J. Klawans, One, Two, Three, Bill Myers, Love Junk Taxi Park, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Regina Barthmaier, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Regina Barthmaier, Untitled, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Kira Grennan, Brooklyn Room, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Kira Grennan, Brooklyn Room, Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club

Kira Grennan won First Prize for her collage of photos taken while living with friends in Brooklyn, thus the title. The artist explained to DoN that the artwork uses traditional collage techniques but is atmospheric and loaded with narrative of her time in NYC.

Collage and Mixed Media at The Plastic Club is on exhibit through September 22nd, 2012.

Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer

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Art Sphere at Jed Williams Studio

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Kristin Groenveld, Art Sphere at Jed Williams Studio

Kristin Groenveld, Art Sphere at Jed Williams Studio

Kristin Groenveld explained to DoN, “Art Sphere is a non-profit education program for low income youth here in Philadelphia. It started in 1998, it’s a grass roots organization that works with all volunteers and we focus in on educational art programs that actually make a difference in neighborhoods.”

Kristin Groenveld, Art Sphere at Jed Williams Studio

Kristin Groenveld, Art Sphere at Jed Williams Studio

“At the Jed Williams Studio we’re exhibiting artwork on the theme of envelopes and, this is a version of the theme that I’m doing, but we do do in West Philly with students for years. We use envelopes as a metaphor for getting good news, getting bad news, and how we deal with it in our lives. And we also do that similar theme with the oysters and the oyster shells and how we make a pearl out of that piece of sand that really hurts us or irritates us in our life. With the intention of trying to transform difficult times into positive times.” 

Kristin Groenveld, Art Sphere at Jed Williams Studio

Kristin Groenveld, Art Sphere at Jed Williams Studio

Kristin Groenveld continued on, “That’s the magic of art for me and for Art Sphere. Other things Art Sphere does is we clean out neighborhood parks, we remove all the trash, remove broken glass, paint over graffiti, paint murals, and then we paint everything from benches to trash cans to make it really fun to go spend time there.”

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer