Recycled Art
The anonymous artists who created recycled works may well have had limited assets. However, the salvation, redemption and ultimate resurrection of these thrifty improvisations make recycled art a genre that is rich in the spirit of creativity.

Our recycled collection includes a wide variety of creations made from scrap materials, including a nearly life-sized horse rendered from spent wooden matchsticks; a house fabricated from bullet casings and wired as a lamp, and a pyrographed trunk that we call a "carpenter’s folly."

Other transformations include mundane packaging such as cigarette and bread wrappers folded or woven into purses and picture frames; everyday wooden discards, including sewing spools, toothpicks, popsicle sticks, and cigar-box wood, resurrected as frames, lamps, boxes, and other objects of use and beauty.

Textiles also figure among the recyled works— rugs crocheted from women’s stockings in shades from black to palest, "scrappy" quilts with elements of their pattern blocks pieced together from two or more bits of fabric, and a small collection of needleworked cotton flour sacks.

Mends
The Ames Gallery began showing mended items in the 1980's with a show titled On the Mend. Our evolving collection includes broken, worn and cracked pieces that have been rendered whole again. Stapled china, patched buckets, and wired jugs have been transformed from the commonplace to the extraordinary, by virtue of their creative repair.

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Reused: Recycled and Mended Art