Top 10 Artistic Uses of Waste

Elise Morin, an artist from France, along with architect Clémence Eliard managed to create a wonderful installation composed of 65,000 discarded CDs. The work can be observed at the Halle d'Aubervilliers of Paris's Centquatre.

The large waves of disks were made by sewing together all of the CDs. Thus artists were able to come up with a waste landscape that occupies a territory of 500 square meters. Later the disks are going to be recycled into polycarbonate.

Elise Morin's official website.

Yong Ho Ji is a Korean sculptor that makes incredible works of art by depositing recycled tires into special ornately sculpted constructions. His three-dimensional works represent mutated figures. For example one may see different parts of animals mixed together to produce a new form.

Despite the fact that the artist makes use of heavy duty machine tires, his solid animal sculptures show in detail the anatomy of these creatures.

While looking at the sculptures from afar one can see for instance a horse-like form, but when looking at the same work from a close distance the figure appears to be a representation of a tail of a chicken standing on cow's legs.

It would be interesting to note that Ji utilizes various type of tires, including those used in motorcycle, bicycle, and tractor tires.

The artist's official website.

The author of these portraits made from junk is Jason Mecier. To create his works Mercier makes use of beans, noodles, yarn, pencils and a wide range of other materials. He also has portraits made entirely from beauty products, such as lipstick and eyeliner.

The artist has been known for making works of art for more than a decade. Another interesting thing is that some of the products used in his works are donated to Mecier by celebrities themselves.

His collection includes the portraits of Barack Obama, Olsen twins, Andy Warhol, Chris Rock, Ru Paul and more.

The artist's official website.

Just like Mecier (mentioned earlier), Jane Perkins, an artist from the UK makes his works of art using a wide range of objects that most people would just throw away.

Buttons, toys, plastic forks are just a few tools she uses to create nice illustrations of politicians such as Barack Obama, Queen Elizabeth and others.

According to BBC, inspiration came from hairstylists from Ecuador, who make various beautiful designs from broken jewelry.

Artist's Home page

Old banknotes are the main instrument of Maximo Gonzalez, an Argentinean artist, who currently resides in Mexico City. With their help he manages to make beautiful trees with roots, leaves and fruits.

Some of his trees from the "Something Like An Answer To Something" exhibit were presented this year at Artane Art Gallery in Istanbul.

One of Turkish newspapers wrote that Zaman became popular mainly due to the fact that his works promote the idea of "reutilization."

The first who highly appreciated the works of Don Lucho were Chilean people. The artist makes use of cardboard to create various 3D works that show scenes of everyday life of an average human being.

His beautiful collection was firstly presented at the streets of Santiago, Chile. The 3D world made by Lucho illustrates crashed vehicles, fallen aircrafts and house interiors. Most of these works are made with such accuracy that some people could probably recognize them as their own.

A lot of attention is paid to details. Thus one can spot small hubcaps on a car, a roll of toilet paper in a house, or even the fold of a blanket.

Tito Ingenieri, an artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina erected a large dwelling using beer bottles. To be able to build his structure he spent 19 years and 6 million bottles.

All of the bottles used in the construction were gathered from city streets and donated by neighbors. The artist said that his house is able to inform about the rising levels of water in the river - one can hear the bottles whistle when southern winds (which signal about a likely storm) blow next to their necks.

Artist's webpage

Jesus Bubu Negron is another artist we decided to mention in our list. This is because he was able to create a carpet from numerous cigarette butts.

The Puerto Rican artist beautifully used the "popular garbage" to make a work of art that not only looks nice, but interestingly enough resembles a woven carpet.

Collecting cigarette butts was the easiest task to do for the commissioned street cleaner, but to finalize his work Negron required a lot of time and patience. The carpet was finished back in 2007 and displayed at Souq Al-Arsa, Heritage Area.

Kris Kuksi from Springfield, Missouri manages to create grotesque works of art using old toys, mechanical parts and a variety of other materials.

Kris' complex works signal about a corrupt and discouraged fall of modern society that boasts new conflicts, new philosophies, new beginnings and endings.

Kyle Bean is a talented illustrator who manages to make portraits using just his color pencil shavings. The artist gathers discarded remnants of his pencils, and then accurately arranges them to create beautiful portraits that show different facial details.

Each work is created using a different pencil crayon. This is another example of how the most unusual junk can be used to make art.

The artist's official website