Featured artists

In this issue we look at the inventive use of materials. The accidental, the planned and the crazy combinations that simple work together. Each artist was asked to share how they source materials, use them and show how creative they are. 

A fortuitous accident leaving a brush in epoxy resin for a bamboo project. This left me with a freestanding brush with stand. I just added some acrylic paint.
Artist:Paul Blenkhorn
www.sensoryarthouse.com @sensoryarthouse

Title: Organic PLIABILITY
Artist name
Stephanie MacKenzie
Description: Mackenzie uses the vibration of sound to submerge herself into her self conscious and let her inner voice speak. Using form, space and colour to communicate an infinite number of patterns. Part of the Art was done with the stick of dates. It's texture and pliability aloud for free movement and organic form.
​www.stephanie-mackenzie.com @stephaniemackenzieartist

​Title

Canola, 2020. Acrylic, charcoal pencil, fabric glue and collaged raw canvas on canvas. 45.7 x 35.6 x 1.8 cm.
Artist name
Amanda Childs
DescriptionMixed media collage painting inspired by the glorious rapeseed fields in St Ives, Cambridgeshire (we North Americans would call it canola!).
Using acrylic, charcoal pencil, fabric glue, and collaged raw canvas on canvas, this piece uses a variety of materials to inform the piece.
It is also representational of another material - that of the subject itself, the canola plant.
Website
www.amandachildsart.co.uk, Instagram handle @amandachildsart

Title
Pony Tales
Artist name
Rachel Letchford
Description'Pony Tales: Best in Show & Hooked' 2019
'Pony Tales' are an on going series of changeable object sculptures. The found objects I use to create these pieces are often things I have re-collected, things that hold childhood memories and that I am attached to in some way. Through play I often come across magical combinations, where the objects become charged with a new energy or identity.

Image: Pony Tales: Best in Show & Hooked 2019 (installation at The Morning After, Joseph Wales Gallery, Margate Dec 2019)
Website
https://www.instagram.com/rachelletchford/

Title
Rocks In My Head
Artist name
Carla J Fisher
DescriptionDiscarded packing materials, avocado shells, leeche nuts and Keurigs eroded and worked onto a beeswax/damar resin/pigment base create the backdrop of this depiction of a spring thaw. The "rocks" are covered in moss, water and foam, all sculpted from thread. The 10'w X 3'h X 7 "d (306 cm w X 91.4 cm h X 17.78 cm d) piece is made in five panels of materials gathered and tossed my way over the last few years, held as "good junk" in my art stash.

​Website
www.carlajfisher.com carlajfisher on Instagram

Title
Toothbrushes in the Abstract
Artist name
Kelly Wu
DescriptionThese 'toothbrushes' are made predominantly with paintbrush handles, since they were the easiest found objects to access. The heads of the 'toothbrushes' are all made from different materials, including clay, wool, cardboard, rope, AstroTurf, thread and more. I wanted to toy with the idea of distorting elements of our daily routines.
Website
https://www.instagram.com/mothwu/

Title
Lockdown Stories: A Selfie of Humanity in Quarantine ⏭ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB15xHdm6AE ⏭ Downloadable file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H8LN2K6sSUiRSAjLMjiMWo9ELSFqc0Sg/view?usp=sharing
Artist name
Avishay Zawoznik, IG: @zavishh
DescriptionWhile personal space reduced following the COVID-19 crisis, space for self-expression only expanded. IG stories were among the greatest manifestations of humanity sharing its changed way of living. @zavishh used them as his material to create an audiovisual account of these weird times.
Website
URL: http://linktr.ee/zavishh, IG: https://www.instagram.com/zavishh/

Title
WAR & ME
Artist name
Ana Geliashvili
Description My work is about Georgian War against Russia that happened in 2008 as I was part of it and lived there at that time. I use materials such as canvas, prints, accessories (toy bullets) chains, old shoes to show people the difficult time Georgia went though in this period. I love fashion as well as art so I try to combine two to make powerful and meaningful message to the audience.
Website
https://www.instagram.com/ananoart/

Title
Untitled
Artist name
Divya Sharma
Description
This is a prototype for a larger installation that uses fabric (I used leftover pieces of a previous installation) sewn together to the drawings made on them. To fill the ‘sculpture’ I used current newspapers that contain endless information about the corona virus to fix the sculpture to this moment in time . I then painted on the fabric with Indian ink. So the overall effect is that of strange but uncanny shapes emerging from a dark forest or subterranean interior landscape.
2.5 m in height

Instagram: Divyashamastudio

Title
Velvet Ghost Giraffe
Artist name
Ruth Hawe
Description: A two way stretchy velvet sheet from a market stall stapled onto a piece of builders plywood board 7 feet tall. Outline of giraffe marked by staple gun through the velvet, then the giraffe shape stuffed with the contents of an old duvet. I used a long pole to push the stuffing into place and contour it into shape, and deliberately left the staples showing to delineate the giraffe.
Website
https://www.instagram.com/ruthhawe

Title
Enigma
Artist name
Tony Welch
DescriptionThe mirror aspects in this piece were sourced from a skip where a glass company throws all of their scraps and I have permission to take materials from it which I then rework to make usable.

Literally anything that I find around the house which is either no longer working or has a detail within it that I feel would make a great addition to a piece of work i'll dismantle it and then paint, spray or re-work it into what detail i'm looking to achieve from it.

I have visited car boot sales and auctions for a number of years and buy cheap boxes of disused household junk items that I think can be recycled into a new piece of art.
Website
Website: www.tonywelchfineart.co.uk Instagram: TonyWelchFineArt

Woe Betide Us
Artist name
Lynne Chapman
DescriptionI wanted to 'lock' my own waste plastic into my artwork, so began quilting my guilty stash of carrier bags, heat-treating them to create strength and texture, then stitching them together. The work grew and I quickly ran out, so advertised on Facebook and local people dropped bags of bags over my back gate. I suspended the 'quilt' over batons made from my waste water bottles, to create a wave which comments on the plastic in our oceans.
Website
website: www.lynnechapmantextiles.co.uk / instagram: @lynnepencil

Title
Resurrection 1
Artist name
Enzo Marra
DescriptionI have been recycling my failed drawings.
Cutting them apart and reattaching them together.
Creating new imagery which hopefully will develop further in the future.
Website
http://www.axisweb.org/p/enzomarra https://www.instagram.com/enzomarraart/
Images

Title
Euphoria
Artist name
Ally Zlatar
Description: euphoria is a painting that illuminate a binge, the breaking point and giving into the cravings. This painting was made on the back of the cereal box that I ate all the cereal out of. Although eating food is pleasurable to most, it is almost magical for those with eating disorders. It can allow you to dissociate and temporarily suspend you from reality. Food can help you forget about your problems and solely escape the confides of reality. Materiality and feeling the pleasure , texture and taste of food is one that is hard to resist.
Website
https://ally.pb.studio/

Title
"Sans Titre"
Artist name
Bouge Alexandra
DescriptionI've worked with hair. I like hair because it's a natural material. For me, hair symbolizes both exclusion and sensuality.
Website
https://alexandrabouge.tumblr.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/bougealexandra/

Title
[Freedom, Organic handmade charcoal ink studies on mulberry paper, 23.03.20 - Ongoing]
Artist name
Jordan Sallis
DescriptionMy art practice focuses on using organic materials as the subject and the medium. Interest in nature and art has led me to combine the two by crafting my own tools, inks and papers out of natural resources. I have been painting with handmade charcoal ink on mulberry paper.
Website
www.msblackink.co.uk

Title
Blue bottle
Artist name
Sharleene Olivier
DescriptionI am currently making a series of little monsters using porcelain heads someone was going to throw out and passed to me. This baby monster is used from items found around the home. Her face and hat painted. She is one in a series of monsters.

Instagram: sharleeneolivier
Website
https://sharleeneblog.wordpress.com/

Title
life with corona
Artist name
Gabriela Drees-Holz
DescriptionCorona hopefully is integrated in our lives
Material wire, fabrics, wool
Size 110x60x50
2020 created during my shutdown
visit my film: youtube, art during the shutdown, Gabriela Drees-Holz
Website
Dreho.de

Title
Playful structures
Artist name
Abi Charlesworth
DescriptionDuring lockdown I've used materials I have to hand. These sculptures are made from our old table top and emulsion paint. I have displayed this work in an empty public pool to create a void
Website
www.abicharlesworth.co.uk

Title
Bed of Grass
Artist name
Sarah Larby
DescriptionMy practice is driven through working directly with materials, so I would primarily define my work as sculptural, often starting new works by speculatively exploring a material before pushing the boundaries of what it is traditionally used for.

The work Bed of Grass, was created using Pond Rubber, inspired by the Arte Povera Movement and what materials I had available at home during lockdown. The Pond Rubber and Felt were left over from my parents renovation of the garden.

I aim to change the qualities of a material through layering matter, coating a surface, or through traditional processes such as needle felting, weaving and painting.
Website
www.salarby.wixsite/artist

Title
My Daily Reality
Artist name
Inshra S Russell
DescriptionThis odd series began inspired by the Instagram hashtag #stayhomestilllife, where flowers and beautifully curated objects have been photographed in pristine homes of interior designers and art directors. Living with a 3 year old and pregnant for the second time, my reality is very different, so I used objects on the table after breakfast everyday as a starting point for my still lifes, spending no more than 15 minutes each day. The series, now on day 17, has evolved with me using objects around the kitchen and in response to current news and the search for my own identity.
Website
www.studioinku.com, www.instsgram.com/inshra and www.instagram.com/studioinku

Title
The Language of Music
Artist name
Shani Zahav
DescriptionI love working with materials that people are not usually consider to be artistic and sometimes even trash. Pieces of cardboard boxes, old newspapers and metal wires are my favorite ones. There's something so magical in using their strengths to create something beautiful.
Website
shanizahav.wixsite.com/arts

Title
house
Artist name
Amy Jackson
Description'house' was created out of 579 Times newspapers and black mortar, standing 5 foot 8 inches squared it was designed to represent a home without windows and doors, commenting upon mental health and the struggles we face.

My father was diagnosed as the world's worst recorded case of hoarding, with newspapers being a major part of his obsessive collecting, I began to make art works using newspapers I 'stole' from my family home in Leeds, UK.

Using old newspapers to create the work comments on the passing of time as well as my own desire to breathe new value into objects which seem obsolete to the outsider.
Website
https://www.thisisamyjackson.com & https://www.instagram.com/thisisamyjackson/

Title
Covid Journal - 'Night Panel'
Artist name
Margaret Fitzgibbon
DescriptionBringing my studio home and running out of materials during Lockdown, my eye caught on a box of my deceased mother's sponge hair roll, I had kept. Their feminised colour - pink and texture suddenly seemed perfect to create a raised background for the multiple eyes I was making from cotton scraps. I sliced them up and finally attached these soft bouncy discs onto the 'Night Panel' to suggest a surrealist anxiety.
Website
http://www.margaretfitzgibbon.net and fitzgibbonmargaret1

​Title
CanREvam
Artist name
Lucy Oates
Description I have a great curiosity in to how one can utilise waste materials within art contexts. This interest has led me to develop my very own hybrid printing and joining method involving recycled cans and plastic packaging. I rescue the cans from the bin, clean them, dress them up in paint and prints, and ta-da they have a new function.
Website
www.lucyoates.com

:Title
Nurdle Extractometer
Artist name
Jenny Pope
DescriptionI have a large collection of found, secondhand, repurposed, beach-combed and found in the gutter and from skips objects which I use to make my sculptures. I have added to these during lock down. I have focussed on filtering, sieving type shapes in order to allude to a machine which could remove the microplastics (nurdles) from the oceans.
Website
www.jennypope.com instagram @jennypope_lifecoach

​​Title
Adán y Eva
Artist name
Emilio Vieites Aguiar
DescriptionThere is a dark cave where I found a paint stain, it had traces of coal, I could not see them until I used my lighter. They were millions of years old.
I painted some faces of compacted sand that looked like primitive faces, so I made a painting called Adam and Eve. Sand and carbon paper, all glued with the latex of the trees.
Sometimes you can see snails stuck in the paintings, hundreds of little corpuescos that came from the shore of the beach.
Website
www.emiliovieites.com https://www.instagram.com/emiliovieites/?hl=es

Title
Seed Head
Artist name
Deborah Gardner
DescriptionSeed Head developed from a body of work which considers plants in futuristic environments. The centre of the work is an Easter egg holder I found in my cellar and had kept because of its translucent colour. The seed pockets and fringe are plastic tiebacks, pipe cleaners and straws, stored from years ago, and now in our 'plastic age' awareness, I thought I'd repurpose what was left.
Website
www.deborahgardner.co.uk https://www.instagram.com/_deborah.gardner

Title
America (haiku assemblaged from Allen Ginsburg's poem, 'America')
Artist name
Kio Griffith
DescriptionKio Griffith is an interdisciplinary artist working across graphic design, printmaking, sculpture, sound, video, assemblage, writings, and installation. As he relishes the materiality of found and appropriated objects and images infused with the cross-cultural history in which he perpetually dwells, he often mines his own richly complex family history for personal experiences which create insights into a broader geopolitical context even as they touch on modern-day issues of immigration and hyphenate identities.
Website
http://kiogriffith.com/

Title
Sequested Plastic
Artist name
Beth Barlow
DescriptionTo save plastic milk bottles from ended up in our oceans.
To make them into something so precious that they are cherished.
To represent the cost of plastic in the ocean through the fabrigation of fragile animal skeletons.
Website
www.bethbarlow.com Instragram bethbarlow13

Title
Decomposition
Artist name
Jiajia Zeng
DescriptionDecomposition, 2019
Gelatin, Glycerin, White Wine Vinegar, Water, Daily Used Plastics
Approx. 40 x 33 cm, Duration: 1 year
Decomposition is a temporary sculpture molded from used plastic packages, by visually speeding up the decomposition time of plastic, I hope to convey the critical thinking of temporary and permantant, sustainability and consumerism.
Website
www.jiajiazeng.com

Title
Purest Green Bowl
Artist name
Sandra Wilson
DescriptionI have recovered precious metals from electronic waste using a hydrometallurgy chemical process. This piece created was inspired by the Blackadder sketch 'Purest Green' where the character Percy whilst trying to be an alchemist searching for Gold discovers 'Purest Green' instead. This silver bowl has a 'splat' of the 'Purest Green' solution of all the metals (including gold, copper, iron, cobalt etc) stripped from some computer circuit board fingers that I sourced on Ebay.
Website
website - sandrawilson.co.uk and Hoseki on instagram 

Title
Pannetier 1838
Artist name
Noah Wing
DescriptionAll of the materials that I used for this painting were either found or given to me. I found an old canvas in my garage, a popsicle stick in a drawer, and a small scrap of canvas in my closet. I used the last of my green paint, and I was given the chicken wire by a friend.
Website
https://noahwing.com/ https://www.instagram.com/noahgarrettwing/?hl=en
Images

Clean Stream
Artist name
Sara Mai
Description To realise art a material was required, a durable colourful material that would raise environmental awareness, plastic bottle tops were chosen.
The tops are individually pierced and joined with monofilament, which is easy to undo to extract the colours for re-use or recycling.
Through experimentation ‘plastic pixel art’ is expressed as fine art, motivational banners, edutainment, designed objects, 3D modelling and more.
Website
www.smptree.co.uk www.instagram.com/smptree

Title
Make it happen
Artist name
Teri Anderson
DescriptionI try to use unorthodox materials to craft work. I believe that anything can be used as a material or stimulus for artwork. the use of left overs can also be a form of recycling

@tinyteri13 instagram
Website
https://teriandersonsite.wordpress.com/

Title
Burned griddle
Artist name
BEENISH AHMED
Descriptioni am using different materials to make my Visual. i have used plastic bags, selifon and foaming sheets, sprays, plaster, glue, and waste material to make this visuals.
i work on the theme of domestic life and domestic objects.
Website
insta: @beenishahmed_21

Title
We drift, we wander.
Artist name
Camilla Brendon and Kayleigh Cassidy
DescriptionI (Camilla) work with found and recycled materials to make installation and collage artwork which visualises ocean issues. This diptych, a collaboration with Kayleigh Cassidy, takes single use packaging collected from around the home during lock down. Cassidy has added text about phytoplankton or Tiny Ocean plants, to the colleges to give the work another dimension.
Website
www.camillabrendon.com @camillabrendon @magpiecassidy

Title
The library of the future, 2020
Artist name
Sarah Strachan
DescriptionThe process of my practice incorporates the made and the readymade - digging clay or acquiring a bath - both consume my time equally in terms of researching, sourcing, selecting, reclaiming, altering, repurposing and materials.
This work required hours of searching, recovering, moving and rennovating an old cast iron roll top bath from a farmyard, bought from ebay for 99 pence.
The constraints on my practice caused by Covid-19 and lock-down have caused me to reflect on the materials I use in my work, not least because I have no access to a conventional kiln.
Website
website: www.sarah-strachan.co.uk/Instagram: @sarahstrachan

Title
Sugar Bowls
Artist name
Sabatin Bascoban
DescriptionSugar Bowls deals with the consumption of sugar: the delicious taste of it and the destructive effect on the body when one had too much of it. On one hand the objects are candy coloured, on the other hand they are made from reconstituted newspaper. The grey paper pulp is formed into a range of bowls and spheres, suggesting a heavy and dense material, like concrete, but instead is very light and rather brittle.
Website
www.sabatin.co.uk, @space_sled

Title
Transforming Touch II
Artist name
Michelle Rinow
DescriptionMy work is about combining knitted textiles with technology to create kinetic and interactive pieces. I used a touch activated sensor to trigger a ballon to inflate and move the knit, and LED lights to illuminate the piece The knit is also stuffed with yarn to create a squishy, playful texture.
Website
please see my work in motion at www.michellerinow.com @michellerinowdesign