BELOIT, Wis. -- It doesn’t take a lot to unleash your creativity.
In the works of artists like Nancy Mayhew, built around discarded items, sometimes surprising collections of small things are elevated to a greater, beautiful whole.
Paul Bobrowitzi’s sculpture park in Colgate, Wis.
Kali Hanson/APG Media of Southern Wisconsin
It’s part of a movement known as refurbished art.
For Mayhew, originally from Beloit, it all started with a plate and a hammer.
She affixed the pieces of that plate, after breaking it up with the hammer, to a cement turtle in her yard. Since then, she’s made thousands of mosaics from sea glass, seashells and even metal washers.
A pelican-themed work by artist and Beloit, Wis. native Nancy Mayhew.
Courtesy Nancy Mayhew
A subgenre of found art, the refurbished art movement was born in Europe. According to Artspace Magazine, displaying found objects as so-called “cabinets of curiosities†has been gaining a foothold since at least the 16th Century. It wasn’t until the 1900s, however, that some of these curiosities made their way into works of art, or objet trouveÌ.
The Dada art movement began in the early 20th century with the radical idea that anything can be made into art. The most well-known artist to take that to heart was Marcel Duchamp of France, but this style can be found in other artists’ works including Pablo Picasso and Edgar Degas.
Faces on art by the late Dr. Evermore at his sculpture park in Sauk County, Wis.
Kali Hanson/APG Media of Southern Wisconsin
Refurbished art typically incorporates banal, ordinary objects with everyday materials, sometimes even trash. Some of the most well-known works of art within the junk art subgenre include Man Ray’s “The Gift†in 1921 and Tracye Emin’s 1980 work “My Bed,†featuring the artist’s actual used bed and pillow along with ordinary objects such as cigarettes, empty bottles, and polaroids.
Mayhew said she regularly gets phone calls asking if she’ll take something for her art that otherwise would be thrown away.
“I get a lot of, ‘I have my grandma’s gravy bowl and I broke it, can you make something for me out of it?’†said Mayhew.
Many people also ask her for memorials for recently passed pets, which she makes on rocks.
Found item sculpture
Further subgenres within junk art include Milwaukee native Paul Bobrowitz’s sculptures and Mayhew’s mosaics.
Bobrowitz takes metal and found objects – sometimes even old shoes – and creates art in his sculpture park in Colgate, Wis., a rural area northwest of Milwaukee. With a few small signs to lead the way, the sculpture park is at the end of a road with Bobrowitz’s work lining the walkway, on the same property as his workshop and home.
Bobrowitz has sold thousands of pieces and has many on display around Wisconsin, and is a self-described artistic loner. Asked if he keeps in touch with others who work in refurbished art, Bobrowitz said he generally keeps to himself, lest his work be influenced by others.
“I don’t want to be influenced by anybody else,†said the sculptor.
Bobrowitz said he was confused by a question posed to him about his art, for this article: Why are you doing this?
“Why wouldn’t I be?†he said, “I don’t know what else I would do if I didn’t do this.â€
Wood art storytelling
Milwaukee-based wood artist Ike Wynter Weins also stays in his own world.
A globe sculpture by Paul Bobrowitzi in Colgate, Wis.
Kali Hanson/APG Media of Southern Wisconsin
His curiosity during the earlier era of Pinterest boards and DIY coffee tables led Weins to create intricate art from found wood. He uses his pieces to tell a story and keep people’s attention.
Weins credits a family recycling and junk removal business as an inspiration for his work.
While not trying to convince every artist to work with recycled materials, he does think it “opens up the mind†and helps people “think outside the box.â€
“I know how much of an impact... finding one person’s pieces of work or finding something that inspires you can change the direction of your life and your career and your passions,†Weins said.
Weins admits that, when he walks into an art gallery, he sometimes doesn’t understand the pieces. And so, he’s also mindful of making art that makes people stop and look at it closer, that tells a story.
“There’s no art without storytelling,†Weins said, “I think it’s a very powerful form of human connection.â€
Dr. Evermor
One of the most famous refurbished artists in Wisconsin is the late Tony Every, better known as Dr. Evermor.
Every began filling a sculpture park in the 1980s after purchasing the site with friend, Jim Delaney, adjacent to Delaney’s Surplus Sales on U.S. Highway 12 in North Freedom, Wis.
Every found inspiration in the site’s piles of scrap metal area from wrecking jobs, and created works of art that Delaney would sell.
In the mid-1980s, Every built the most-famous sculpture in the park: the Forevertron. The towering structure still commands presence, located in the park’s center.
Dr Evermor’s Forevertron sculpture in Sauk County, Wis.
Kali Hanson/APG Media of Southern Wisconsin
Every’s daughter, Tya Kottler, a welder herself, said part of the structure is made from a decontamination chamber from one of the Apollo space missions. Her father acquired the chamber from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after the university acquired it from NASA.
Dr. Evermor incorporated several workstations around his sculpture park in North Freedom for the next generation of welders. There, he fashioned his works but he also wanted others to have a place to create their own.
Art as wellness
Every’s wife, known as Lady Eleanor, said creating his art was a 24-hour job for him that helped him battle depression. Kottler said the “shock and awe†on the faces of visitors brought her father joy.
Mayhew, as well, speaks of the mental wellness she finds in art.
During treatment for breast cancer, Mayhew’s mosaicing ability became limited to hammering. The art she produced during this time was largely made from metal, stone and sea glass, three elements found within Qigong that represent different points in a person’s life.
After retirement, she became a personal trainer and Qigong teacher and still holds classes at the Beloit Art Center three days a week when she’s in Wisconsin.
“There’s nothing better than doing art, especially when you’re going through a difficult time.†Mayhew said.
Artist Nancy Mayhew and her students.
Courtesy Nancy Mayhew
Mayhew sells her art through her business, Mayhew Mosaics, in both Beloit and on Sanibel Island, Fla.
At the Beloit Farmer’s market, she says she’s sold “thouands†of mosaic turtles and comical roosters. In Florida, there’s a market for her work with themes of pelicans, storks, blue herrings, flamingos and fish.
Art as community
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayhew created mosaic kits for children that included everything needed to make either what the picture she provided showed, or to make whatever they were inspired to.
Mayhew has also worked with the Beloit Art Center to fundraise for cancer patients, selling wooden fish to raise money and teaching community members how to mosaic them.
Now 71, Mayhew said she’s in her “metal element,†with cutting metal representing the downsizing many people in this stage of life experience.
Mayhew said her students are also a source of learning and inspiration. She said they often come into a class not knowing what they’re going to create, only to leave with a work of art.
“Everybody has some type of creativity.†she said.
