Broken doll appendages, golf tees, shirt buttons, sea shells, beads, shark teeth and plastic fork tines are just some of the materials that are fair game for assemblage artist Jane Perkins.
Establishing herself as one of Britain's latest-greatest recycled art sensations, she attaches discarded post-consumer detritus gleaned from local waste bins onto enlarged photographs of instantly recognizable pop culture icons and political figures with copious amounts of glue and then crowns her finished works with a final coating of glue to ensure that everything stays where it belongs.
News of the 51 year olds kitschy yet undeniably eye-catching creations has spread well across the pond and throughout the international art community, enabling her to become commissioned - a feat that many artists dream of achieving yet far too few actually experience.
Neighbors in her Kenton, Devon hometown are so enthusiastic about her unexpected fame that they are now depositing their random bits and pieces directly on her doorstep, helping to make Perkins' 20 hour assemblage process all the more convenient.
What would you imagine she could garner for her pop-art works, which feature almost entirely scavenged material that you and I would easily throw away? £950 ($1,553.43 USD) per final creation!
Not too shabby for a former nurse who decided to officially hang up her stethoscope just a few years ago in favor of pursuing an art degree from the Somerset College Of Arts and Technology.
Transitioning from handcrafted brooches to portraits, she found great interest among fans of celebrities who are eager to collect anything that reflects the likeness of their favorite stars.
Perkins has created impressively touchable, textural portraits of everyone from the Queen of England and Madonna to Barack Obama, David Beckham, Boris Johnson, and Nigella Lawson.
The artist offers insight into her process: "I use cut up plant pot markers for the teeth, and plastic forks come in handy for giving the hair a textured, spiky look. The only materials I buy especially are the eye beads as they look very real and help to capture emotion in the picture."
If you're not officially convinced that there is potential recyclable treasure lurking in the garbage cans and landfills scattered across our globe, take time to look a lot closer at Perkins' works and you'll find that there is always beauty in the eye of the beholder.
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Into eco-art? Then don't miss these previous profiles of other garbage-scavenging artists who have created impressive displays harvested from junk piles and wastebaskets the world over:
Rhode Island-Based Tom Deininger's Waste Collages
Sculptor Ian Trask's Dumpster Diving Art
British Eco-Artist Stuart Haygarth's Waste Creations
Green Art Discussion Group - Countless Waste-To-Treasure Examples For Your Artistic Inspiration
Anil Kapur
said on January 20, 2010