Art by Medium: Found Objects

"Venerable Truth - Breathe" is a mixed media sculpture by David Saunders. For this series of works, he collected imported cans discarded near his studio in Soho, NY and constructed c...

Nyasha Mashumba, having been the apprentice of Mark Hilltout, has now carved out a career for himself as artist and designer, utilizing the medium and craft he has mastered over the ...

medium: reclaimed button-down shirts on birch plywood panel Born in 1971 in Cincinnati, Ohio, CARLTON SCOTT STURGILL received his Masters of Arts (Fine Art) from London’s Chelsea Co...

The intricate retablos of contemporary artist Patrick Fitzgerald are his means of paying homage to the musicians that inspired him throughout his life. Derived from Mexican votive...

"Turkey Pie - Roy Lichtenstein Homage" is an original serigraph by Roy Lichtenstein embellished by Dennis Pearson. This work is signed by both Lichtenst...

"Ulsto" is an original oil pastel drawing on grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece on the back. This piece features abstract color fields but also depicts an ab...

Based in Chicago, IL, contemporary artist Michael Thompson creates unique kites, collages and mixed media works assembled from material fragments of past and present collected in his travels. In his ongoing series of memory jugs, Thompson adorns stoneware vessels with a kaleidoscope of ceramic shards, found objects, and pocket-sized trinkets he collected over the course of his life. Also known as forget-me-not jugs or spirit jars, memory jugs are African American folk art objects that honor a loved one who has recently passed. Small tokens and mementos of the deceased are gathered and affixed to the exterior of a jug or vase, an abundance of memories that celebrates a life lived to the fullest. Michael Thompson applies this tradition to his own practice, creating tactile assemblages of this and that. Formed in the manner of collage, each jug honors the lost memories of generations past and his own memories of personally discovering each item. With varied sources for materials including Kyoto, Turkey, and Mexico, a great number of the found shards are 18th and 19th century ceramics...

KX2 is a collaboration combining the strengths of artists and sisters Ruth Avra and Dana Kleinman who create mathematically inspired sculpture merging metal and painting. From a dist...

Patricia Miranda's work includes interdisciplinary installation, textile, paper and books. The textiles incorporated in these new pieces are vintage linens from her Italian and Irish grandmothers and sourced from friends and strangers around the country. Each donation is documented and integrated into the work. Textile as a form that wraps the body from cradle to grave. The role of lacemaking in the lives of women both economically and historically is packed with metaphorical potential. The relationship of craft and women’s work (re)appropriated by artists today to environmental and social issues is integral to the artist's research. Her work is process oriented; materials are submerged in natural dyes from oak gall wasp nests, cochineal insects, turmeric, indigo, and clay. She forages for raw materials, cook dyes, grind pigments, ecofeminist actions that consider environmental impacts of objects. The process is left visible as dyestuff is unfiltered in the vat and finished work. Sewn into larger works, Miranda incorporates hair, pearls, bone beads, Milagros, cast plaster. The distinct genetics and environmental and cultural history of each material asserts its voice as collaborator rather than medium. The lace inserts a visceral femininity into the pristine gallery, and exerts a ghostly trace of the history of domestic labor. The combination of earth and lace references human and environmental devastation and the conflation of nature and women’s bodies as justifications for exploitation. Mournful and solastalgic, they are lamentations to the violence against women and the earth. Patricia Miranda is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator, and founder of The Crit Lab, graduate-level critique seminars and Residency for artists, and MAPSpace project space. She has been Visiting Artist at Vermont Studio Center, the Heckscher Museum, and University of Utah; and been awarded residencies at I-Park, Weir Farm, Vermont Studio Center, and Julio Valdez Printmaking Studio. She received an Anonymous Was a Woman Covid19 Artist Relief Grant, an artist grant from ArtsWestchester/New York State Council on the Arts, and was part of a year-long NEA grant working with homeless youth. Miranda currently teaches graduate curatorial studies at Western Colorado University, and develops programs for K-12, museums, and institutions such as Franklin Furnace. Her work has been exhibited at ODETTA, NYC; ABC No Rio, NYC; Alexey von...

Patricia Miranda's work includes interdisciplinary installation, textile, paper and books. The textiles incorporated in these new pieces are vintage linens from her Italian and Irish grandmothers and sourced from friends and strangers around the country. Each donation is documented and integrated into the work. Textile as a form that wraps the body from cradle to grave. The role of lacemaking in the lives of women both economically and historically is packed with metaphorical potential. The relationship of craft and women’s work (re)appropriated by artists today to environmental and social issues is integral to the artist's research. Her work is process oriented; materials are submerged in natural dyes from oak gall wasp nests, cochineal insects, turmeric, indigo, and clay. She forages for raw materials, cook dyes, grind pigments, ecofeminist actions that consider environmental impacts of objects. The process is left visible as dyestuff is unfiltered in the vat and finished work. Sewn into larger works, Miranda incorporates hair, pearls, bone beads, Milagros, cast plaster. The distinct genetics and environmental and cultural history of each material asserts its voice as collaborator rather than medium. The lace inserts a visceral femininity into the pristine gallery, and exerts a ghostly trace of the history of domestic labor. The combination of earth and lace references human and environmental devastation and the conflation of nature and women’s bodies as justifications for exploitation. Mournful and solastalgic, they are lamentations to the violence against women and the earth. Patricia Miranda is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, educator, and founder of The Crit Lab, graduate-level critique seminars and Residency for artists, and MAPSpace project space. She has been Visiting Artist at Vermont Studio Center, the Heckscher Museum, and University of Utah; and been awarded residencies at I-Park, Weir Farm, Vermont Studio Center, and Julio Valdez Printmaking Studio. She received an Anonymous Was a Woman Covid19 Artist Relief Grant, an artist grant from ArtsWestchester/New York State Council on the Arts, and was part of a year-long NEA grant working with homeless youth. Miranda currently teaches graduate curatorial studies at Western Colorado University, and develops programs for K-12, museums, and institutions such as Franklin Furnace. Her work has been exhibited at ODETTA, NYC; ABC No Rio, NYC; Alexey von...

Jo Yarrington has always been interested in chance and the found {moment, object, person}. How random experiences click in to place, form a narrative, reveal a truth. All the work ...

Jo Yarrington has always been interested in chance and the found {moment, object, person}. How random experiences click in to place, form a narrative, reveal a truth. All the work ...

Jo Yarrington has always been interested in chance and the found {moment, object, person}. How random experiences click in to place, form a narrative, reveal a truth. All the work ...

Jo Yarrington has always been interested in chance and the found {moment, object, person}. How random experiences click in to place, form a narrative, reveal a truth. All the work ...

KAT FLYN is a self-taught assemblage artist working presently out of San Diego. She began her career as a costume designer in Southern California. Over the years she amassed a trove ...

Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue is a series of paintings and sculptures that have been created since the spring of 2014. Ellen Hackl Fagan_SeekingtheSoundofCobaltBlue_Found Object...

Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue is a series of paintings and sculptures that have been created since the spring of 2014. Using domestic construction materials from her garage, extras from home improvement projects or the garden, have been captured, much like a photogram, but with paint, not silver. By blending photography and painting, Fagan finds that the patterns created with industrial, mass-produced objects around the house and garage, speak to her interest in producing paintings that link to sound. These works are portraits of the artist’s home, its history, and the materials used to build that maintain her home. Ellen Hackl Fagan builds connections between color and sound using installations, interactive games, and collaborative projects that combine color-and-texture saturated paintings with music...

The freestanding sculptures in this portfolio are made from the “sticks”: a pile of found wood that Sweibel has been pulling from to make new works since about 2002. The pile consisted of more than a dozen four- to seven-foot lengths of hardwood, each an uneven inch in depth and width. The sticks were warped, with worn yellow paint on one side and raw wood on the other three. Over the years she has painted the raw sides of the sticks, cut the wood into shorter lengths, and sliced paint off – and kept the residue from these actions. Sweibel has also made sculptures ranging from full-length sticks to tiny stick splinters. She built these sculptures using sliced-off paint. Timeworn materials and objects have an intelligence that the artist looks for and listens to. Shaping and reshaping material to find new form and elicit new insights in the material itself is the territory she is mining. The limitations of the process are its strengths. Her work is concerned with fragility, precariousness, adaptability, and strength. It is a visual response to powerful yet unseen forces - like wind and thoughts - that threaten, propel, ruin, and protect. Liz Sweibel is a multidisciplinary artist working in drawing, sculpture, installation, and digital photography and video. Her spare, personal language of abstraction transforms ordinary materials into statements about connectedness and responsibility: every action has an impact, the effects persist in space and over time, and we are accountable. By drawing attention to simple, ordinary “stuff of life” and referencing both shared and personal history, Sweibel’s work explores and reflects back fundamental experiences in response to our world and relationships. Her intention is to reinvigorate viewers’ awareness of the everyday – in its raw beauty and precariousness – in hopes that they might bring heightened senses of sight and care to their daily lives. Sweibel has participated in solo, two-person, and group exhibits in New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, Michigan, and Tennessee since 1998. In 2016, Sweibel’s work was in the group shows Lightly Structured at Sculpture Space NYC, Precarious Constructs at the Venus Knitting Art...

The freestanding sculptures in this portfolio are made from the “sticks”: a pile of found wood that Sweibel has been pulling from to make new works since about 2002. The pile consist...

Small child hovers suspended above a black bird taking flight. In balanced on one side a brass hook frog, on the other side a ritual object suggesting a strategy game of duality unit...

Schwartz received a degree in fine art from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia, and later studied sculpture at Columbia University. Her work has been shown in...

Schwartz received a degree in fine art from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia, and later studied sculpture at Columbia University. Her work has been shown in...

Schwartz received a degree in fine art from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia, and later studied sculpture at Columbia University. Her work has been shown in...

Jo Yarrington’s photographs, prints, works on paper, glass sculptures and architecturally-based installations have been shown in exhibitions at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Yale University, Cornell University, the Museum of Glass, the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Artists Space, St. John the Divine Cathedral, Grounds for Sculpture, the Museum of American Glass and ODETTA, among others. International exhibitions have included Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow Cathedral, Glasgow University, Galeria Sala Uno and Centro de las Artes de Guanajuato. She represented the United States at the Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates and participated in the Berlin Biennial. in 2010 she received the Bronze Prize, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, Macedonia. Yarrington is a recipient of artist grants and Fellowships from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. She has received Residency Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Museum of Glass, the Museum of American Glass, the Bridge Virtual Residency/ SciArt Center, the Lucile Walton Fellow/Mountain Lake Biological Station, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Anderson Center and the Ucross Foundation, among others. International grants and fellowships have included the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity/Canada, SIMS Residency/ Iceland, Cill Rialaig Artists Residency/Ireland, the Burren College of Art Residency/Ireland and the American Scandinavian Foundation. She is a Professor of Visual and Performing Arts at Fairfield University and lives and works in New York City. STATEMENT In site-specific exhibitions, public art commissions, collaborative and individual projects Jo Yarrington has used varied combinations of glass, waxed surfaces, found artifacts and experimental analog photography to investigate the way we perceive – searching for, experimenting with and developing throughout a sensory-based vernacular. Her mostly translucent materials function as physical framework and symbolic membrane. Light, both natural and ambient, provides a kinetic or time-based element to her work. Scale and the integration of architecture are also pivotal components. In the 6-part installation for the two-person exhibition Illuminated, Yarrington continues her interest in the connections between vision, sound and language. In Mute-ability: Compositions 1 – 6, her title for this light-based comprehensive work, she combines the words mute and malleability. The work focuses on found piano rolls, a music storage medium, originally conceived as coded notations or ‘note control data’ for music produced in pneumatic player pianos...

"Life Long Breezer" is an original oil pastel drawing on grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece lower left. It features a man on a motorcycle with a multi-colore...

This cello sculpture created by Ken Butler is part cello mannequin dress form torso. It is made in the spirit of absurdity many surrealists embraced using f...

"On Lake Huron, 1956 B.C." is an original oil pastel on grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece lower right and dated it on the back. It...

Schwartz received a degree in fine art from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia, and later studied sculpture at Columbia University. Her work has been shown in...

Schwartz received a degree in fine art from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia, and later studied sculpture at Columbia University. Her work has been shown in...

Schwartz received a degree in fine art from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia, and later studied sculpture at Columbia University. Her work has been shown in...

Schwartz received a degree in fine art from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia, and later studied sculpture at Columbia University. Her work has been shown in...

"Hollowsphere" is an original oil pastel drawing on a paper bag by Reginald K. Gee. It depicts abstract forms in black, yellow, green, and red. The artist signed the piece on the bac...

This installation imagines the Radium Girls as abstractd subjects. Repeating a motif of a circle, signifying the mouth, this art object conveys a modern view of the these workers, tied in with repetitive actions in abstracted patterns. Radioluminescence is the phenomenon by which light is produced in a material by bombardment with ionizing radiation and can be used as a low-level light source for night illumination of instrument...

Radioluminescence is the phenomenon by which light is produced in a material by bombardment with ionizing radiation and can be used as a low-level light source for night illumination of instruments or signage or other applications where light must be produced for long periods without external energy sources. Radioluminescent paint used to be used for clock hands and instrument dials...

True Happiness, cold wax- tissue paper, found object, and oil stick over acrylic paint on canvas, 2025. A child stands as a shaman in his understanding of what creates true happiness...

The Tibetan dorje, a ritual object in Tibetan Buddhism, symbolizes indestructibility and irresistibility while a crow peeking out from behind the Japanes...

canvas, collage, pastel, acrylic, photo transfers, 2016 Bifurcated sheets of canvas with torn edges suggest the beautiful open vistas now inaccessible to the residents of the Mott Haven and Port Morris areas of the South Bronx, abandoned and dominated by de-teriorating remains, rotting remnants of piers, New York State-owned power stations and City Waste transfer stations. The unusual materials and torn canvas edges convey with tactile sensibility the contradiction documented with photo-transferred images, layered with acrylic and pastel. Materials and image fuse revealing a broken South Bronx history, an urban renewal tragedy, an area once the retreat of choice for fresh air, heath and greenery. The shards of information and vistas evoke the former Port Morris harbor named after Governor Morris a signatory of the constitution. There barges once docked and youth once swam off a pier in the East River. Cunningham’s work centers upon time, transience and contradictions shown through images of the shifting urban present. Compelling environmental concerns juxtaposed against industry, ur-ban blight and the loss of the natural environment as well as her concern for her Bronx home area faced with gentrification drive her work. Linda Cunningham is a Bronx based artist with a long New York and international exhibition career. ODETTA, Bushwick, Brooklyn featured her work in a November two person exhibition and in the Harlem FLUX Art Fair, in 2015 and 2016. Her 2013 installation in No Longer Empty’s “This Side of Paradise,”at the Andrew Freedman House was installed at the Bronx Museum, 2014 in an exhibition sponsored by the Bronx Arts Alliance. The Bronx Museum displayed her sculptural installation ”Urban Regeneration” on its terrace, 2009/10. Exhibitions in Germany began with a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship in Berlin and her monumental public sculptural installations & alternative memorials are permanently sited in Cologne, Kassel, Bad Hersfeld and Cornberg, Germany, Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, New Jersey and City of Sculpture, Hamilton, Ohio. Alternative memorials were sited at the CUNY Graduate Center across from Bryant Park, 1989-1995, in Tribeca and at UN Plaza, New York 1997-1998. Recent temporary public sculpture installations were at Westchester Sq., Bronx. NY, 2014 and Marcus Garvey...

This flat file installation is a kind of Wunderkammer – a Cabinet of Wonder or Curiosity containing a small idiosyncratic collection of select wonders and oddities of the natural wor...

Kathleen Vance explores environmental issues such as water conservation and protection through positive stewardship of the land. She looks to convey an appreciation of nature and tra...

Jane Sangerman lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA from the University of New Mexico and her MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She has had on...

Jane Sangerman lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA from the University of New Mexico and her MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She has had on...

Jane Sangerman lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA from the University of New Mexico and her MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She has had on...

Jane Sangerman lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA from the University of New Mexico and her MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She has had one ...

Jane Sangerman lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA from the University of New Mexico and her MFA from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She has had one ...

Kathleen Vance explores environmental issues such as water conservation and protection through positive stewardship of the land. She looks to convey an appreciation of nature and tra...

"Searching for Surround Sound" is an original oil pastel drawing on grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece lower right. It depicts a man in an interior. 13 5/8...

The installation, Orchestrations, explores the vernacular in vintage piano roles. The physical perforations in the piano roll paper, coded notations for sound, act as a vehicle for l...

"Territory" is an original oil pastel drawing on grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece lower left. It features a few shadowed figures...

This mask was created by an unknown artist from New Guinea. It depicts an elongated face with carved wood and cowry shells for eyes. Mask: 29 x 8 in, incl...

"Painting Style of 814 BC" is an original oil pastel on a grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece lower right. Painting Style of 814 BC, of 1999, is one of Gee’s ...

"Huts" is an original oil pastel drawing on a paper bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece on the back. It features two grass huts on a light blue ground. The background...

Mixed media figurative landscape collage of pen & ink, photographs and drawing titled "Wrong Side of Tracks" by California artist Arn Ghigliazza (American, b. 1937), 2009. Titled and...

This textile is an excellent and unusual example of the work of Stacy Wiatrak, being both an artwork and a wearable garment. The artist uses appliqued ribbons, images of lilacs and b...

"Seated Figure in Studio" is an original oil pastel drawing on a Safeway grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece lower left. It features an abstracted figure seat...

Globalization IV: Collateral Damage, ash, commercial wood, paint, blue concrete bullets, 32" x 97" x 4" (Installed dimensions), 2005. This 3-piece wall sculpture was done by San Francisco-based artist, Gyöngy Laky...

"Deviation" Gyöngy Laky, apple, acrylic paint, screws, 30" x 60" x 2.5" (installed), 2020. This contemporary mixed media wall sculpture was done by San Fr...

"Techno Danny" is an original oil pastel drawing on a grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece in the lower left. This artwork features an abstracted figure in fro...

"Oblivion Road" is an original oil pastel drawing on grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece lower left and dated it. It features a figure on a motorcycle on a ra...

"Sudden Movement" is an original oil pastel drawing on a grocery bag by Reginald K. Gee. The artist signed the piece lower right. This piece features an abstract form in a barren lan...

TONY DAGRADI is an internationally recognized jazz performer, artist, composer, author, and educator. For over three decades he has made his home in New Orleans, performing on tenor ...