You Made That Out of What? (10 Photos)

Ten works made from ordinary things

Each piece here is built from, or built as, something people use every day: tools, tires, knives, nuts, toys and trash.

More: Sculptures That Used to Be Total Junk (15 Photos)

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😇 Knife Angel — By Alfie Bradley in the UK 🇬🇧

Alfie Bradley and the British Ironwork Centre in Oswestry made the 27-foot angel from about 100,000 knives and blades, collected through amnesty bins and from police forces, then disinfected and blunted. Since its completion in 2018 it has toured British towns as a warning against knife violence.

💡 Human Nerd Fact: More than 80 families asked for personal messages to be engraved on blades in the wings.

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🧑‍🌾 Wheelbarrow Farmer

The wheelbarrow is the body, a tire is the head and old metal bars make the arms and legs. Gloves, shoes, sunglasses, a blue cap and a pitchfork do the rest. Every part is still easy to name.

💡 Art Nerd Fact: The idea has a famous ancestor: Picasso’s Bull’s Head is made from a bicycle saddle and handlebars.

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🦁 Mountain Lion — By Bordalo II in El Paso, Texas, USA 🇺🇸

Bordalo II built this 64-foot mountain lion on the west wall of the One San Jacinto Plaza building. The parts were salvaged in the region: old slides and jungle gyms, tires, pieces of recycling bins and other plastic waste.

💡 Artist’s Words: “I want people to take a deeper look into the material we are using and the animals that we are creating,” he told El Paso Inc.

More: Bordalo II Builds Animals From Trash (30 Photos)

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

Jaanisoo made this elephant in 2018 from steel and recycled tires. The cut rubber folds the way elephant skin does, and the tread reads as wrinkles. The Estonian-born sculptor has lived in Finland since the early 1990s and often works with car tires and plywood.

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💨 Blown Away — By Penny Hardy

Hardy builds her figures from rusted gears, bolts, screws and other discarded metal, using her own body’s proportions. In the Blown Away series, the Devon-based sculptor’s figures look as if they are coming apart in the wind. Heavy scrap, made to look weightless.

More: Junk Metal Sculptures (8 Photos)

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👹 Hannes the Troll — By Thomas Dambo in Boom, Belgium 🇧🇪

Hannes is one of seven trolls Dambo built at De Schorre from reclaimed wood: old shelves, pallets and branches from fallen trees. More than 200 volunteers helped collect the material. The trolls were a gift to the town for Tomorrowland’s 15th anniversary.

🔗 Follow Thomas Dambo on Instagram

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🐈 Sea-Glass Cat — By Kateryna Shelyhina in Odesa, Ukraine 🇺🇦

The cat is made of glass the sea threw back: shards worn smooth by waves. Shelyhina wraps each piece in copper foil and solders it in place, Tiffany style. The finished cat went to the city, where it became a local landmark.

More: The Natural Movement of This Cat Sculpture Is Amazing

🔗 Follow Kateryna Shelyhina on Instagram

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💧 Watering Can Downspout — Port of Anacortes, Washington, USA 🇺🇸

A giant yellow watering can does a downspout’s job at the Port of Anacortes. The Port says rain from the roof of a warehouse on Railroad Avenue runs through its oversized watering cans and out over the rain-garden plants below. Here the garden tool really waters the garden.

💡 Eco Nerd Fact: Rain gardens are planted dips that catch runoff and let it soak into the ground, and they can help filter out pollutants.

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🔩 Figures of Nuts — By Jean Martin in Saint-Barthélemy 🇧🇱

Jean Martin, a former welder who lives on Saint-Barthélemy, builds each figure from about 20,000 stainless-steel nuts welded one by one. Because the nuts are open, light and wind pass through the bodies. Up close it is hardware; from a few steps back it is a person.

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🧱 Dispatchwork — By Jan Vormann

Where mortar has crumbled, Jan Vormann fills the holes with LEGO. The Berlin artist set the bricks loosely into the masonry so that, in time, they fall out and people can reuse them. The repair is real, and so is the toy.

More: What If LEGO Could Repair the World? (12 Photos)