To find your new favorite accessory or household item, sift through the 4.6 pounds of trash you produce each day.
It might not all be garbage.
Don’t believe it? Ask the 15 area artists who contributed 60 pieces of “trash art” to “Found Objects: New Beginnings” at the Baltimore Public Works Museum.
They turned tin coffee cans into a pair of colorful cowboys boots, old chair parts into a sculptural pooch, glass left along the Patapsco River into a Tiffany-style lamp. And the imaginative list goes on and on.
“This exhibit is meant to have you look at objects in life and see them beyond the purpose we usually assign them,” said Mari Ross, Baltimore Public Works Museum’s Executive Director. “We’re so used to having a service whisk away our trash and we never think of it again. Before you throw away something, pause and think about how you could reuse it.”
Exhibiting artist Char Brooks saved receipts, bubble wrap and sheets of laminate from clogging our already overburdened landfills by constructing “Pill Housecoat” and “Working Stiff.”
These two works — a dress made of pills and bubble wrap and a shirt made of receipts encased in laminate — will have you thinking about your incessant urge to replenish your substantial wardrobe and swallow medications purely out of habit, Brooks said.
“People work and work their whole lives so they can buy things that they perceive they need. What they’re working for is stuff that’s pretty temporary. Maybe we should examine what we’re working for,” Brooks said.
Suggestions for how to reuse everyday materials and artist statements from Brooks and other “Found Objects” contributors are available at the Baltimore Public Works Museum. With help from the statements, viewers can match each work with its creator. Winners take home a pencil made from recycled blue jeans.
A portion of the artists’ proceeds will fund the Museum’s educational programs.
IF YOU GO
“Found Objects: New Beginnings — The Art of Trash”
- WHERE: Baltimore Public Works Museum
- 751 Eastern Ave. on Pier 7, Inner Harbor, Baltimore
- WHEN: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; Through Oct. 9
- COST: $3
- PRICING: $175 to $3,000. The majority of works sell between $250 and $700.
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INFO: 410-396-5565
