Scavenging

Found-Art Sculptor Gives Old Saws New Life

Check out the robotic, kinetic, found-art sculptures of Nemo Gould! This clever Midwesterner-turned-Californian — whose work has been exhibited at many galleries and the San Jose Museum of Art, the Berkeley Art Museum and the Arizona Museum for Youth — uses salvaged metal, wood and more to make sleek, witty, irresistible pieces that flash, glow and gyrate. Among the elements of his 2008 work “Housecat,” you can spot a saw handle and part of a walking cane. “Octovarius” includes a salvaged violin. “Little Big Man” includes deer antlers and what looks like the casing from a vintage radio. Get a gander of ’em here. Gould himself has this to say:

“What makes a thing fascinating is to not completely know it.  It is this gap in our understanding that the imagination uses as its canvass.  Salvaged material is an ideal medium to make use of this principle.  A “found object” is just a familiar thing seen as though for the first time.  By maintaining this unbiased view of the objects I collect, I am able to create forms and figures that fascinate and surprise.  These sculptures are both familiar and new.  Incorporating consumer detritus with my own symbology, they are the synthesis of our manufactured landscape and our tentative place within it– strong and frail at the same time.”