Finding Art in Trash

You've heard that one man's trash is another man's treasure. Leo Sewell is living proof.

Sewell's art is made from discarded plastic, metal and wood he finds in the back alleys of Philadelphia. His sculptures range from the size of a small stereo speaker to massive 40-foot installations, like his Junk-o-Saurus dinosaur.

His junk-art (he calls it "reclaimed") isn't, well, junk. It's winning friends and influencing people: Sylvester Stallone has come calling (and buying), as have more than 40 museums worldwide. Ditto the EPA, who enlisted Sewell to help promote re-use and recycling. (Watch a video of Sewell at work here.)

Sewell grew up near a naval dockyard in Annapolis, where as a teenager he'd go treasure-hunting.

"I would come home with so many junk items that my parents challenged me to build something creative out them," he told the UK's Daily Mail. (See a gallery of his work here.)

Sewell’s workshop is a Ripley’s-Believe-It-Or-Not of some 100,000 found objects he's divided into 2,000 categories: gold-coated sharks teeth, corn holders, Fisher-Price people. The materials he uses sometimes relate to the subject of the piece: For example, his canine sculpture "The Boxer" is held together with dog chews.

He told the Recycling Rag: "Chance is the greatest creative force that can happen." 

And that's no trash talking.

Photo courtesy ericnakamura via Flickr.