My Own Top Five - Recycled Art Exhibition

We post a monthly Staff Top Five here in the Culture Club. And the Recycled Art Exhibition has it's own awards program, a panel of good people recognizing a half dozen outstanding pieces in the show. These things are nice enough. I respect them.

But I want to do my own Top Five of the Recycled Art Exhibition, because, well, it's just that cool of an exhibition.

In its 8th year, the Recycled Art Exhibition showcases the most vivid aspects of the imaginations of Flagstaff's residents. Here below, in no particular order, are my favorite pieces in this year's show (please forgive my poor photography):

Nancy DeBlois' Maiden Japan is one of the most striking pieces in the show. You first get a glance of it out of the corner of your eye - you think that someone has been standing silently watching you. Nancy repairs mannequins for a living actually, but creates mesmerizing artwork with them, too.

Curtis Smith's Lazer Tazer is almost impossible to photograph, but it's the perfect Marvin the Martian weapon, complete with a real crystal from which I am sure it draws it's earth-destroying power.

Brian Painter's Going Mobile might be the most brilliant work in the show, just for the statement it makes. It's hard to see here, but that's tricycle holding up a Saguaro cactus with a spigot spewing water, holding up a platform on which rests a mobile home and small plot of fake grass. Draw your own conclusions.

Here's where the creepiness really sets in. Psychic Resonator, by Tim Thomason, seems to be a science experiment gone horribly awry. Bunnies and babies morphed, skeleton blondes, spiders with barbie doll heads... it's all very Mike Frankel-esque.

Andrea Hartley has been entering her unique monsters made of socks into the Recycled show for a couple of years. But this year's submission, Sock Monster, takes it to a whole new level of madness and brilliance. I can only show half of the piece here, but the monster-face-bra should be enough to just begin the narrative of a must-see work.

Rebecca Borowski's George The Inner Tube Elephant is just that: an elephant made out of inner tubes. A simple work of art, actually. It's just that it comes out looking like a cross between a midget elephant and the Gimp from Pulp Fiction.

The Recycled Art Exhibition remains open through May 15 at the Coconino Center for the Arts. There are artist demos and workshops on April 24, May 1, and 8. Click here for the schedule.

Cheers,
JT