Skip to main content

How sculptor Ptolemy Elrington turns old hubcaps into works of art


One British artist has found treasure in the junk that some people throw away and, using his creativity and resourcefulness, turns it into metal masterpieces. 

Ptolemy Elrington, who is currently based in Brighton, England, takes abandoned hubcaps and repurposes them into spectacular animal sculptures using hand tools and wire. Ptolemy specializes in wheel trims, but any piece of discarded metal scrap is a potential art masterpiece in his eyes.





His creations can take anything from a single day to three months, such as the ten-meter long dragon he built from 200 hubcaps, which sold for £3,000. Check out the video, embedded below, and his website for more.


[h/t: FREEYORK

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Gilbert Legrand turns mundane stuff into delightful characters

Gilbert Legrand doesn't see the world like the rest of us. You see a scrubbing brush, he sees an Apache chief. You see a a pair of scissors, he sees smooching lovers. The French artist's imagination is so wild and unrestricted that he can turn the most ordinary objects into unexpected sources of delight. I just spent half an hour lurking on his website, and you should, too.

Nick Smith creates NSFW prints using Pantone color chips as pixels

Scottish artist Nick Smith , known for his Pantone mosaics, recently unveiled his latest work at London's Lawrence Alkin Gallery . Called Paramour , the erotic images look like they've been heavily pixilated, almost like 8-bit art. If you look at them up close, you'll only see the Pantone color swatches, but if you step back—or zoom out—you'll see the NSFW pieces. "Marking 400 years since Shakespeare's death, Paramour employs Nick Smith's signature 'colour-chip' methodology, combining modern nudes with excerpts from the Bards' sonnets and plays. As well as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Venus and Adonis , the works feature racy text from poetry and prose by DH Lawrence, John Cleland, EM Berens and Sarah Walters. Exploring lust, love and appreciation of the female form, Paramour brings classic literature to the modern conscience, telling stories of illicit love through evocative imagery." [h/t: WideWalls ]

The Salimbaa

Here's a strange tribal instrument I never heard of before now. Originally from the Tinananon tribe of southern Philippines, the bowl-shaped Salimbaa is made of metal and wood, has 30 bronze wound strings, and is played using two small sticks.  Caleb Byerly, who makes lost/extinct musical tools in his North Carolina workshop, has an interesting story on how he made his first Salimbaa. WATCH: More details about Caleb and his craft over at  Our State .