Trash Becomes Treasure – Recycled Art
DC has a very cool event each year titled Artomatic. It’s 1000 artist, displaying their work for 28 days and nights, all in one building, attracting over 50,000 visitors. The diversity of the artwork at this year’s event was amazing. I personally enjoyed all the artwork created with recycled objects. Over the next few weeks I’m going to highlight a few of the artists who’s work caught my eye at Artomatic 2008.
Elizabeth Lundberg Morisette
created a very cool 3-D display of bottle caps, title 1,584 Bottles of Beer on the Wall (I’ve Had My Share). Created with bottle caps and nails, I thought the 40″ x 50″ piece was very cool. It was inspired by her Grand Father-in-Law who gave up drinking around age 60. When he passed away, Elizabeth received two cans of nails he had saved. She used those nails for this installation. Check out Elizabeth’s Flickr Stream, she has great work much of it created with recycled materials.
Click on any image to view it full size.
I wanted to know more about how this display came about so I contacted Elizabeth. She told me the bottle caps have been collected over time from friends and family and that they were often brought back from vacations, or weddings. She created a permanent bottle cap mosaic wall in her house (which is for sale, by the way) with nearly 5,000 bottle caps. You can see more pictures of her house here.
Since her family is moving to Colorado, when Artomatic closed down, she couldn’t keep all the bottle caps. However, she did share this cool photo of a pot she created with some of the left over bottle caps.
I think this is truly ‘Pop’ Art! Do you know any other artist creating art from recycled materials?
Written by Scott Roewer
Certified Professional Organizer®, Scott Roewer is founder of The Organizing Agency, a professional organization and productivity company devoted to teaching residential and business clients how to increase productivity, save money, and how to live a more organized and abundant life.
An award winning company, in 2013, The Organizing Agency was once again awarded the Angie’s List Super Service award, in 2012 the National Association of Professional Organizers recognized Scott with its top honor, the Founders’ Award, and later the same year, the U.S. Air Force commended his volunteerism, naming him Joint Base Andrews “Hometown Hero.” For more information on Scott’s team and how they can help you, contact the office online or call us directly at 202-249-8330.