Last week in my Design Observer guise I wrote about a project that I think will interest Unconsumption readers: Jill Stoll’s “Random Acts of Mail Art” (artisinalpostcards.tumblr.com):
Based in New Orleans, she described herself as “a disenchanted artist,” who loves the process of making more than the process of, say, hustling for gallery contacts. (She has, however, shown work in a variety of media at a variety of venues.) The postcard collages are partly a way of finding creative uses for materials that had accumulated in her studio — photos, magazines, various paper types, and “abandoned art projects” of past students. “Artists are hoarders,” she explains.
…
Surely this is a useful creative challenge for Stoll. But her quiet project is also a lovely example of what I’ve previously referred to as “dancing about ruins:” transforming undervalued, easily overlooked materials at hand — and here I would include not just her leftover magazines and the like, but the lately-unloved postal system, too — into something striking, special, memorable.
If you want to receive one of Stoll’s repurposed-material cards, or have someone else receive one, go here.
The rest of my D.O. piece is here: Jill Stoll combines artistic ritual, creative reuse, and the postal service as connector.: Observatory: Design Observer
Elisabeth Lecourt recycles old maps and turns them into beautiful dresses and shirts. I don’t imagine they’re wearable, but they’d look lovely on the wall nevertheless.
I’m starting to feel bad for maps. But at least there are plenty of efforts to reuse them creatively: here are a bunch we’ve highlighted in the past.
Elisabeth Lecourt | Les robes géographiques: (via Dresses made from old maps - Boing Boing)
Everyday plastic items, artfully arranged.
Installation by Mary Ellen Croteau; we featured her plastic bottle cap portrait earlier on Unconsumption here.
See also: Artist Jean Shin’s displays of empty pill bottles.
“I am inspired by vintage or used objects: records, books, furniture, anything that has a history.” —Mike Stilkey
Artist Mike Stilkey, whose amazing artwork was featured in an exhibition here in Houston five or so years ago, turns everyday objects into eye-catching sculptures.
If you’ll be in the San Francisco area this month, you can catch several of Mike’s pieces, along with those of two other artists who work with books — Cara Barer (mentioned previously here) and Melinda Tidwell — at the Andrea Schwartz Gallery through April 26.
At the American Academy in Rome, filmmaker Nicholas Heller follows Visiting Artist Ann Weber on her daily rounds, scavenging cardboard boxes out of dumpsters, collecting ideas from architectural details and Bernini sculptures and creating sculpture in her studio.
Cup of tea, anyone?
Some 3,000 tea bags (yes, you read that right!) make up this installation at Rolling Greens, a “home and garden destination” in Los Angeles. (Spotted on Pinterest here. Source: Los Angeles, I’m Yours, which features additional photos.)
See also: Quilt made from steeped tea bags.
How would you describe this example of repurposing? Beautiful? Or not your cup of tea?
Brooklyn-based artist Marc Andre Robinson turns discarded furniture into eye-catching sculptural assemblages.
(via My Modern Met)
What do you do with expired or otherwise unwanted credit cards?
Kristal Romano turns them into wearable art.
Plastic, strung. Installation at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, July 2009. (Photo via Betty Birney’s Blog.)
Don’t you think something like this would make a unique room divider?
Nirit Levav Packer via The Telegraph (photos Nirit Levav / Rex Features)
Bottlecaps and wire.
(via Artisans Of Colorado)
Made by Elizabeth Morisette, whose work we featured earlier on Unconsumption here.
