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sustainable art by the practical benefi ts of using materials easily available to him, anything from old kitchen cabinets or discarded ironing boards to wooden deck chairs and weather-beaten red- wood fence posts. Fortuitously, Hall's choice of materials is both commercially viable and consis- tent with the Earth-friendly ethos with which he was raised. T e discarded wood Hall uses,
Walt Hall's Boy in Orange
has begun expanding his reach to far- ther-fl ung areas as supply has dwindled. "I've started going to agriculture scrap yards, places with old derelict cotton pickers, hay balers and combines. I'm constantly sourcing metal," he says. T ough he's been exhibited widely
and his desert scraps have found them- selves hanging on the walls of the privi- leged, Buckingham himself has in a way been "sustained" by his recycled and repurposed work. "I never intended to become a sculptor. I just started screw- ing around with metal, found the colors of the desert, then realized that this is a viable way to express myself and impact the culture," he says. "I've been on it like stink on a monkey ever since."
WALT HALL Los Angeles-based artist Walt Hall
(www.thesappystudio.com) has been hooking people on the endearing char- acters featured in his work for years, using the solid wood grain found on his canvas of choice to enhance his il- lustrative work. Hall was attracted to
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which by now has become an inextricable part of his unmistak- able style, also serves to enhance his approach to painting. "For me, materials and applications all create a piece of an environment and help establish an emotional tone," says Hall, who also creates art from old books donated to him by friends and collectors. Hall's most memorable re-
purposing was a piece he painted on the face of a 1930s-era crib. "It was beat up, but it had some amazing hand-painted clouds," he says. "It was a beautiful piece to work on, and it really came out great."
GORDON CHANDLER Gordon Chandler's juxtaposition
of utilizing hard materials to express a soſt er artistic statement approaches the miraculous. T e artist starts with found objects, ranging from steel drums to li- cense plates, which he then fashions into the shapes of quilts and kimonos, objects
"WE LIVE IN AN INCREASINGLY DISPOSABLE WORLD WITH AN INCREASING RATE OF CONSUMPTION."
Gordon Chandler's Yellow/Scripted JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012
more frequently associated with materi- alistic comforts than industrial metals. Raised in Massachusetts, Chandler—
who in the mid-1970s started a construc- tion company that manufactured steel wood burning stoves—has had his art featured in galleries across the country, from the Gallery of Functional Art in Santa Monica, California to the Rymer Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee. "I reference our cultural landscape
by using materials that others have overlooked," says Chandler of his art. "We live in an increasingly dispos- able world with an increasing rate of consumption. Broken things are not fi xed but rather thrown away. I resur- rect these discarded elements and alloy them into sculptural forms... My purpose is to bring new value to these overlooked materials, to create a new form that is greater than just the sum of its parts." ABN
