Clever Use (8 Photos)

Some artists start with marble, bronze, or a clean white gallery.

These artists start with sidewalk weeds, stainless-steel nuts, recycled tires, driftwood, scrap plastic, blue ceramic tiles, mosaic pieces, and blackened wood — then make public art that stops people in their tracks.

The materials look unlikely at first. Then the artwork makes them feel inevitable.

More: Sculptures That Used to Be Total Junk

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🐰 “Bunnerina” — By David Zinn in Ann Arbor, Michigan 🇺🇸

David Zinn only needed chalk, charcoal, concrete, and one stubborn patch of green. On his official store, Zinn identifies the work as “Bunnerina”, a temporary street art installation made in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on June 30, 2021, with weeds becoming the rabbit dancer’s tutu. In his Instagram post, he turns the costume into the joke: rabbit ballet is tricky when the tutu is edible.

More: 9 Cute Spring Drawings by David Zinn

🔗 Visit David Zinn’s website

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🔩 Steel Lace Sculptures — By Jean Martin in Saint Barth 🇧🇱

Jean Martin turns hardware into something strangely human. His own site presents the works as Steel Lace Sculptures: resistant to rain and marine elements, but open enough for the view to pass through. Artists of St Barth describes his stainless-steel nuts as building blocks arranged into delicate lacework around the figure.

💡 Sculpture Fact: Martin’s nut-by-nut method has a surprisingly cosmic idea behind it. Artists of St Barth says he compares stainless-steel nuts to atoms — tiny universal units that can be assembled into almost any form.

More: Powerful Statues Made of Stainless Steel Nuts

🔗 Follow Jean Martin on Instagram

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🐘 “Elephant” — By Villu Jaanisoo in Jyväskylä, Finland 🇫🇮

The sculpture is often shared online as “Looking Tyred,” but Villu Jaanisoo’s own listing gives the title as “Elephant” (2018). The 360 × 420 × 250 cm work is made from steel and recycled tires in Jyväskylä, turning tire tread into folds, wrinkles, legs, and a trunk. View it on Google Maps.

💡 Material Fact: Jaanisoo’s tire sculptures are not just a recycling gag. When writing about his giant tire duck, Talking Beautiful Stuff quotes him connecting rubber’s ridges and surface structure to the tradition of sculpture-making — a scrapyard material carrying an art-history role.

More: Looking Tyred — Elephant Sculpture Made of Tires

🔗 Follow Villu Jaanisoo on Instagram

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🌲 “Torso” — Driftwood sculptures by Nagato Iwasaki in Japan 🇯🇵

Nagato Iwasaki’s driftwood figures look assembled by the forest, not a studio. The series is titled Torso: each branch still looks found, weathered, and uneven, but together the fragments become bodies moving quietly through the trees.

💡 Forest Fact: The effect feels instant, but Torso was not made quickly. My Modern Met reports that Iwasaki worked on the driftwood figure series for 25 years and completed it in 2010 — so the “found” material still took decades of choosing, smoothing, and arranging.

More: 10 Unbelievable Driftwood Sculptures That Defy Imagination

🔗 Visit Nagato Iwasaki’s official works site

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♻️ “Burro de Miranda” — By Bordalo II in Vimioso, Portugal 🇵🇹

Bordalo II makes waste hard to ignore by turning it into animals that stare back. This is one of two “Burro de Miranda” murals completed in 2023 for the Eco Donkey project with AEPGA at Parque Ibérico Natureza e Aventura (PINTA) in Vimioso. Local reporting by Lusa/Diário de Trás-os-Montes documents that the murals used urban waste collected in nearby villages.

💡 Conservation Fact: The donkey is also part of a real conservation story. The European Youth Portal profile for AEPGA says the group was created in 2001 to protect the endangered Portuguese donkey breed “Burro de Miranda” and the rural culture connected to it.

More: Bordalo II’s Eco Donkey Project

🔗 Follow Bordalo II on Instagram

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🔵 Capela das Almas — Azulejo façade by Eduardo Leite in Porto, Portugal 🇵🇹

The Chapel of Souls, or Capela das Almas, turns a busy Porto street into an open-air tile mural. Its exterior azulejo façade was added in 1929; Viúva Lamego’s project page credits Eduardo Leite, and Religiana documents 15,947 blue-and-white tiles illustrating the lives of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Catherine. See it on Rua de Santa Catarina in Porto.

💡 Tile Fact: “Azulejo” looks like it should come from azul, the Portuguese word for blue, but Britannica traces the word to Arabic al-zulayj, meaning “little stone.” The blue-and-white façade is Portuguese tile art; the word carries a much older Iberian-Moorish history.

More: The Chapel of Souls: 15,947 Blue Ceramic Tiles

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🐟 “Croydon Fishpond Mosaic” — By Gary Drostle in Croydon, England 🇬🇧

Gary Drostle makes stone and tile behave like water. His own essay on mosaic fishponds traces the Croydon piece to a two-metre 1996 commission for the London Borough of Croydon, a small floor mosaic that became the starting point for years of water-themed work. His commission catalogue places the original site at the junction of Bedford Road and Sydenham Road, Croydon.

💡 Mosaic Fact: Mosaic artists have a word for the flow of tiny pieces: andamento. In his fishpond essay, Drostle points to that free-flowing arrangement as one of the reasons hard tile can carry the complexity of moving water.

More: Mosaic of a Fish Pond by Gary Drostle

🔗 Visit Gary Drostle’s website

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⚙️ “Si on se retrouvait” — Grinder drawing by LPVDA in Saint-Raphaël, France 🇫🇷

LPVDA, Les Pinceaux Verts d’Antoine, does not add paint here — he removes darkness. Saint-Raphaël’s MACO page identifies the work as “Si on se retrouvait”, made in 2022 over more than 200 hours at the Leclerc shopping center’s Drive-side wall on 50 avenue du Commandant Suzanne. A grinder sands the blackened wood back to pale lines, so the wall itself becomes the drawing material.

💡 Technique Fact: LPVDA reached this wood-sanding language by a strange route: Street Art Fest Grenoble-Alpes says he trained in jewelry, worked in landscaping, and started graffiti at 15 before becoming known for drawing on wood with sanding tools and flame.

More: LPVDA Draws With a Grinder on a Wooden Wall

🔗 Follow LPVDA on Instagram

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