Artist Sayaka Ganz was born in Yokohama, Japan and grew up living in Japan, Hong Kong and Brazil, and now lives and works in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Ganz was deeply impacted as a child by Japanese Shinto beliefs that all objects and organisms have spirits, and was also taught that objects discarded before the end of their usefulness “weep at night inside the trash bin” (this is so wonderful I’m going to start teaching this to my son immediately). As her artistic side developed, she infused her artwork with these beliefs, using discarded and reclaimed household objects as a medium for her sculptures. Ganz says:

•     I only select objects that have been used and discarded. My goal is for each object to transcend its origin by being integrated into an animal/ organic forms that are alive and in motion. This process of reclamation and regeneration is liberating to me as an artist.
•     Building these sculptures helps me understand the situations that surround me. It reminds me that even if there is a conflict right now, there is also a solution in which all the pieces can coexist peacefully. Though there are wide gaps in some areas and small holes in others, when seen from the distance there is great beauty and harmony in our community. Through my sculptures I transmit a message of hope.

What you see here is only a small fraction of her work, you can see much more in her Motion, Displays, and Scrap Metal galleries. You can also see more work on Facebook. (via cosas cool)

For the better part of three decades multidisciplinary artist Guy Laramee has worked as a stage writer, director, composer, a fabricator of musical instruments, a singer, sculptor, painter and writer. Among his sculptural works are two incredible series of carved book landscapes and structures entitled Biblios and The Great Wall, where the dense pages of old books are excavated to reveal serene mountains, plateaus, and ancient structures. Of these works he says:

    So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint Romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are.