As the saying goes, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” These sustainable artists have gotten their inspiration from garbage – and turned their junk into powerful works of art.
As a sustainable artist, she has created projects that are not only green, they also have helped make her community a safer place. In the 1990s, Los Angeles was facing serious problems with gun violence. So Lin decided to convince some of the LA residents to give up their guns for the project.
She then melted down the guns and turned them into statues of angels as a perfect icon of hope for the City of Angels. The statues range from 3 feet to 13 feet tall and stand in public places to display the amount of guns that have been taken off the street. After the 9-11 terrorist attacks, her 13- foot tall angel was moved to Ground Zero.
Time and Sue are just another example of sustainable artists. They appear to just pile up a bunch of garbage and then call it “art,” but they actually do much more than that. With the right angle, light shining on their garbage pile creates an image out of shadows.
The garbage itself paired with the shadow image tells a story, for instance, in “Wasted Youth,” we see an abundance of McDonald’s packaging and other fast food targeted for children and the light reflects a couple lying on their backs.
Miguel Rivera got inspired by broken hard drives at his job on a U.S. Air Force base overseas and decided he wanted to turn them into something cool. First, using 33 hard drives, he made a race car. Since then, his designs have gotten more complex, eventually creating a robot!
To Miguel, this process is therapy after a 60-hour work week.
Aurora Robson takes after many sustainable artists and salvages plastic bottles so that they can’t pollute our landfills and oceans. She estimates she has collected around 30,000 bottles. With them, she creates beautiful sculptures and installations that mimic sea creatures and look nothing like the garbage they’re made came from.
Aurora also takes a different kind of junk – junk mail – and turns it into fascinating collages that inspire imagination.
Mark Langan uses reclaimed cardboard, an exacto knife, and a lot of patience, to create extremely detailed works of art. He reproduced the famous “Scream” with cardboard and creates some abstract art as well.
