So I've seen a fair amount of art created from trash in my day (if you ever visit New York City or Philadelphia you'll definitely have the pleasure of seeing all kinds of weird things), including plenty of "art from trash" that looks...well, more like the latter (to put it kindly).
These portraits created by American artist Zac Freeman, though, are awesome, like the kind of awesome that I would pay a good chunk of money for, and I think that's saying something considering it's all made of garbage. There's all kinds of junk in the things; it's almost like a game of "I Spy"! If you look closely, you can see a ton of buttons and bottle caps and jar lids, old dice, scrabble tiles, legos (although really, I don't think there's ever a point in which legos could be considered "junk"). There's old highlighters, combs, forks, phones, pen and marker caps, and toy soldiers. Altoid tins and a remote control, plus a ton of stuff I don't have names for.
Here's a little confession: I tried to make a piece like this once when I was in high school. I gathered up some old junk that I was going to toss and figured was destined for a stinky landfill somewhere and thought, "I can repurpose this into art!" Tons of people have made money off of weird or seemingly crummy art, so how hard could it be really? The answer: very hard.
Tragically hard. So hard, in fact, that my junk "art" was pretty much still just junk in the end. BUT! I think Freeman's art is totally inspiring and my art piece probably came out better than I was giving myself credit for at the time (or at least that's what I like to tell myself now). I wonder if Mr. Freeman accepts donations of garbage?
