Upside of Sustainability...so many materials.

I, of course, failed at art school. There's still something inside of me that wishes I had tried harder. Maybe if I held out I would have learned a craft or skill. The Mike of today has a hard time picturing himself as an artist. I try my best to not be so wasteful, and instead resourceful, but if I ever broke the artist block, what medium would I be comfortable engaging in? Of course I have an ever present fear that my work would be too salvaged and messy in a bad way. So I don't. Make art that is, or at least until I stop being a freak about it. In the meantime there are artists/crafters/designers/architects that are making really good environmentally conscious work, no damn good work in fact. Some artists see waste goods(second hand/salvage/garbage) as a potential resource. Some use organic/natural materials in their work. All produce a kind of beauty you would have never guessed.

We talked a lil' about Stuart Haygarth who creates amazing and beautiful large installations(possible lighting? mobiles?) out of collected garbage/discarded items. On the Canadian front, the National Post highlighted some 40 designers in their paper this weekend past. Two who caught my eye were the Brothers Dressler, who make gorgeous furniture out of re-purposed/salvaged woods and loyal loot collective's Doha Chebib, who has a line of log bowls made from locally reclaimed trees with an amazing colour palette of painted inner glazes. Most noted is each member of loyal loot's passion for good design - "...a common dedication to create objects which posses an inherent value that will endure and remain loved."

If you take a peek through Etsy, you'll find bunches and bunches of retailers selling innovative re-used materials. A blogger pal of ours Second Life Designs, makes some really amazing jewellery from second hand finds. I really like the way she re-invents each piece, giving it a change of character. Another Etsy shop, Second Line Frames makes picture frames from salvaged siding from homes destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. On first glance I thought of the pieces as art themselves. I'd be interested to see work comprised of salvage materials, especially from buildings/man-made structures, a bit like industrial quilting or architectural Op Art.

On that note, I'd like to mention the architecture duo Single Speed Design. Comprised of couple John Hong and Jinhee Park, who answered a call from Paul Pendini a structural engineer and a salvage collector of sorts. Pendini was working on Boston's Big Dig and wanted them to build him a house made out of short job materials used for the constructing of the underground artery that he saw going to waste. If anything they produced a gorgeous home, that looked anything but garbage. They went on to win over critics with the Big Dig Building, proposing once again the use of salvaged materials.

Of course there is the ever popular ReadyMade magazine, a manual of sorts for turning waste into wonderful, and MAKE mag a techie version. Funny thing, this past weekend I picked up a coupla copies of an old Canadian interior design mag called Canadian HOMES which often had an article about reusing/re-purposing materials into great modern home accessories. If anything it's kinda comforting that one off articles have spun off into full mags, with a wonderfully creative market to fund it.

Lastly, something that really amazed me. Moss graffiti. Okay so maybe it's not a hot topic, but it sure feels like evolution. An amazing art form like street art, evolving into an untouchable form of expression. Vandalism no more, hello organic art. This kinda thing gets me all tingly. The possibilities are endless.

So where do we start? Personally, when it comes to waste material I get a feeling that it's more about minimizing first and re-purposing salvaged goods bound for disposal, instead of reworking items that could potentially have a second use as they are, just maybe with a different person. But I'm sure fresh materials are currently on their way to the dump, broken this and smashed that, waiting for the thinking caps to dream up something beautiful. So keep an eye on your streets, and you're bound to find something inspirational.