Recycling Sculpture Competition Each class will be using

Recycling Sculpture Competition Each class will be using recycled mateials to make amazing sculptures. The best scuptures will be displayed in our recycling gallery and prizes will be awarded!

Lin Evola Smidt No one wants their children to grow up in a world plagued by violence, but not many parents have worked as hard to fight the problem as artist Lin Evola-Smidt. When gun violence ravaged Los Angeles in the early nineties, Lin decided to help stop the problem by convincing residents to give up their guns, which would then be melted down to create statues of angels—an appropriately uplifting icon for those living in the increasingly dangerous City of Angels. “I wanted more at that moment than to just create a piece of art, " she says. "I wanted people to make a shift within themselves. “After the terrorist attacks of September 11, the sculpture was moved to Ground Zero.

Michelle Reader Since 1997, Michelle Reader has been working to make recycled materials into sculptures, often incorporating mechanical elements such as the working parts of toys and clocks. Her materials come from city dumps, roadsides, and thrift shops, and include both household and industrial waste. “I love the unpredictability of found materials and enjoy the inventiveness necessary to transform them into a sculpture, ” she says. “I try wherever possible to use materials that are reclaimed, things with a history that have been discarded and might otherwise end up in landfill. ”

He particularly enjoys working with hubcaps because—while they look nice—they really serve very little purpose. “They’re automatically rubbish when on the side of the road, " he says. "But with a little effort and imagination I transform them into something which gives people a great deal more pleasure. ” Ptolemy Elrington

Wim Delvoye While Belgian artist Wim Delvoye isn’t the first person to create art with used tires, he might just be the most talented name in the niche. That’s because his utterly gorgeous creations manage to maintain the structure of the tires while incorporating elements from nature, such as flowers and vines, so the viewer thinks of the delicate beauty of Mother Earth while never forgetting that they are looking at something totally industrial.

From robots to race cars, Miguel Rivera’s creations prove that just because a hard drive has crashed doesn’t mean it is completely useless. Unsurprisingly, the artist found his inspiration in his day job as a systems administrator on an overseas U. S. Air Force base, where he came across ample broken hard drives and decided to do something with them. His first creation was a race car made from 33 hard drives. The body was mostly one whole drive, but the wheels took eight discs a piece. As he started making more and more designs, the creations became more and more complex until he created his most detailed creation to date: the massive robot he calls his masterpiece. The robot contains 14 whole laptop hard drives, pieces from 18 other drives, and a few other spare computer parts. Miguel Rivera

Tim Noble and Sue Webster When people first witness Tim Noble’s and Sue Webster’s Shadow Sculptures, they tend to just see a heap of trash piled up in some meaningless order. But once the creations are lit from the right angle, the artistic merit of the works finally becomes obvious. That’s because the shadows create incredibly detailed images of profiles of the artists, animals and more. Even the selection of the trash itself lends a deeper meaning to the artwork than a quick glance would tell you. For example, in this picture the pile of trash is made from the remains of everything the artists needed to survive for the six months it took them to complete the sculpture.

Rodney "Rodrigo" Mc. Coubrey Unlike many artists working with recycled materials, who feel their work carries a serious and somber meaning, theme of Rodney Mc. Coubrey’s work is “fun”—and it certainly shows