Blog - Art from Ordinary Objects - From WebUrbanist.com

2008-05-29 20:00:02

25 (More) Incredible Works of Art from Ordinary Objects: Cell Phone Sculptures to Push Pin Portraits


Regular readers will remember parts one and two of our ongoing series about amazing art from ordinary objects.
Recently a number of readers have written in to submit their own works
or works they have constructed from everyday materials. Guido Daniele is an accomplished painter who transforms ordinary individual hands into art, Robert Pettit has assembled some strangely inspiring art from discarded cellular phones and Eric Daigh has created some rich and complex works from a simple push pins.


Guido Daniele’s
art ranges from gigantic murals to minutely detailed hand painting.
This Italian-born artist started out as a sculptor but now primarily
focuses on painting and illustration. His designs have been used to
create advertisements as well as to raise global awareness about
environmental and other social justice issues. He is perhaps most
famous for his body painting works which range from full coverings to
small pieces, often with a purpose (commercial or good-cause) and often
stunningly realistic.


We all know that cell phones these days can call, text, surf the web
and remind you to pick up your dry cleaning … but they can also be used
for artistic purposes to create drawings, floor sculptures, light and sound installations and more. Artist Robert Pettit has a show up at the SMFA in Boston featuring these and other creative
uses of over 5,000 cellular phones he collected for artistic purposes.
As more and more cell phones fall by the wayside each and every day,
scrapped for the latest model, one has to wonder if there are other
things (artistic and otherwise) that these strangely ubiquitous objects
could be used for.



Push pins are pretty unlikely candidates for an artist’s toolbox but have become a staple for Eric Daigh.
Originally from Southern California Eric now works and displays his art
in Northern Michigan. As most artists know sometimes limitations in
terms of materials and color palette can be assets. Given the simple
(and fairly bold) range of colors available for this type of tack work
the range of results is impressive. His process is just like a printing
press sorting out valves in blue, red, black and yellow and the
finished pieces involve 10,000+ pins.

“It’s always portraits. I just don’t think anything
else would be compelling. I think the faces are the interesting part,
the method , the fact that I’m using push pins, has to take a second
place to them. And the piece needs to convey something about
the subject, which usually means no smiling. I’m looking for the most
unaffected or unprojected gaze. I want it to look more like a question
than a statement. A piece can take anywhere between 2 days and months
and months, depending on how much time I can devote. Technically, if I
just sat in front of one and didn’t stop, I could do a big one in about
8-10 hours.”

Eric's talent is his eye, and his technique is better defined as
color, not push pins. He intends to leave the pins behind when he
finishes his current piece and begin a series in (what else?) torn
pieces of colored duct tape. “It could be anything, really.” he says,
“colored thread even.” Well, that’s true, it could be anything.

Want More? Check Out These Great Related Articles:

Incredible Art in Motion: From Freeze Frame Urban Photography to Kinetic Sculpture
15 Creatively Twisted Stuffed Animals: Intentional and Spontaneous Distortions of Childhood Toys
Creative Sculpture With a Twist: 3 Extraordinary Ways to Carve Art Out of Ordinary Objects
Urban Street Art Images in Macroscale: The Giants in the Streets
Urban Street Art Images in Miniature: The Little People of London


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