Yes We Can – Neide Ambrosio - Brazil

Neide Ambrosio, known as 'Pretinha', is a true Cinderella story. in 1997 she had retired from the University of Sao Paulo and moved with her husband to Rio De Janeiro in order to pursue his musical career. She was lonely and unemployed. While walking the streets of Rio De Janeiro, looking for a present for a sick friend, she came across a woman selling belts made of recycled materials. They had become friends and this woman taught her how to make crochets.

She's developed her own style of crochet, made of soda pop ring pulls and began selling various designs on the beach in Rio De Janeiro. Her new business was a huge success with tourists and locals alike and soon enough she turned it into a social cooperative where she employs underpriviledged women and helps them support their families. They are very profitable and make enough money to be able to support a children shelter with their income as well. 
 

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Popular Visual Mastery - Bernard Pras

Bernard Pras is currently displaying his recycled artwork at the Mazel Gallery in Brussels, so I thought this might be a good opportunity to display some of his work, which is very fresh and inspiring for me, here.

His technic is very straight forward. When creating a recycled picture, he first locates an image from popular culture, and then builds his own interpretation on top of it using found objects, from bottle caps to turtle shells (as can be seen in the picture above).

Proportion is another strong aspect of his work. He creates life size and bigger than life pictures that decorate walls and preach sustainability in the best possible way - by leaving a strong impression on the viewer.

You can find great pictures from the Mazel Gallery display at Mazel Galerie's Photos - Bernard Pras - Objets Trouvés - Expo

Egg Crates transformed into 2.5D Art

Enno de Kroon (Netherlands) paints human portraits on used egg crates. The output is something halfway between a painting and a mask.

The egg crate's uneven nature brings with it a wonderful "2.5D" effect, as the artist defines it, and allows spectators to select their own point of view, which gives this art form a very personal nature.

Changing the painting's alignment provides various caricatures of the same figure, with all the drama and comedy involved, although de Kroon himself states it had taken him quite a long while before he could actually get his format into proper shape.

I find this inspiring and would very much like to experiment with this format myself.
By the way, We have just completed a new 5000 bottle caps wall carpet and intend to publish it next week on http://facebook.dj/recybo. Stay tuned!

EggCubism on the rise. Check out the entire flickr set, which actually reminds me of an amazingly distorted facebook catalogue. Don't you think so? hmm ;)

Garbage is a moment in space/time

Imagine a moment in the future when garbage is no longer buried, but fully recycled into new, useful products. Is that possible? Would future humanity look back into our time and wonder "how could we live that way?".

NYC artist Justin Gignac puts street garbage in the spotlight. He collects stuff from garbage cans across New York, cleans, arranges them, wraps them nicely in Garbage Capsules and sells them on his website.

100% authentic
HAND-PICKED from the fertile streets of NY, NY
http://www.nycgarbage.com/.

This "Limited Edition Yankee Stadium Garbage Cube" is my favorite garbage cube. It holds garbage collected by Justin in the final Opening Day at old Yankee Stadium.

Time will tell whether consumption culture changes or not. The message is out there though - RECYCLE NOW!

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Real Life is Rubbish

Some say real life is actually quite different than what we see with our eyes. That our visual perception hides the truth from us and keeps us in a comfortable darkness.

Tim Noble and Sue Webster take that saying a step further with their trash art. They project light into spaces and manipulate it using trash to create life size shade figures.

The above trash art installation, called Dirty White Trash, is made of their own trash, collected in a period of 6 months and assembled to present their own figures with a cigarette and a glass of wine. This symbolizes their self criticism of their own lifestyle and the effect it has on the environment.

Being so strongly provocative, this kind of work forces spectators into re-examination of their very own perception and lifestyles. It shouts for change of both in a very clear voice. I only hope they turn off the projector during museum off hours.