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Upcycle. Upcycling. Upcycled.  It’s the new fancy way of saying working with found objects.  If I took an old desk I found on the street and repurposed it for use again, then I would upcycling.  It’s a crafty and creative spin on one of the three “R”s; REUSE!  Artists have been upcycling since before the term was even founded.  Robert Rauschenbergs entire breadth  of work is pretty much upcyled materials; even including that piece of De Koonings that he erased – he was working with an object that was already in existence; repurposing, reusing, upcycling (deconstructing).  Even Duchamps work could be observed through the lens of upcycling.  His ready made sculptures are the epitome of upcyling.  Picasso did it.  The list goes on…

Upcycled art could possibly be one of the best ways to keep junk out of landfills.  If you make a sculpture out of a million discarded toothbrushes and some museum or collector purchases it, voila – out of landfill forever!  Sure, it’s taking up space in the archive warehouse at MOCA, but when they bring it out every 10 years or so, people will pay to see it!  They’ll actually line up to see the massive 40 foot cyclops constructed of 1.8 million brightly colored toothbrushes!

What spawned my thinking on this subject?  I found this project (below) via Not Cot.

One one hand, it is an interesting piece; a good idea.  But, independent of the reference on the left, it wouldn’t be that interesting.  And the thing that really gets me going is, that this piece above isn’t even made from an old table – it’s FAUX UPCYCLING!  This designer has used new materials to reference the repurposing of old materials!  So, in actuality, this table is using new materials to reference a clever use of old materials without actually using old materials.

This is an interesting project – Martino Gamper – 100 Chairs in 100 days

This is upcycling/readymade/found furniture mayhem at it’s finest.

Brilliant.

I had a sculpture teacher, who’s first assignment was for each one of us to make 50 sculptures.  We were not allowed to spend more than 5 minutes on each sculpture.  It was a wonderful assignment for two reasons: 1 – it allowed us to get out of our heads and just make stuff. 2 – The next week when we brought all our pieces in, we had 1000 sculptures (20 students, 50 sculptures each).

Also see Zach Kleyn’s 1 hour sculpture series