Trash Becomes Art with a Genre Twist

About two weeks ago, I increased the length of my morning walk by adding another block. There was this one house along the way that kind of caught my eye because the fence along the sidewalk was lined by unusual cacti and strange faces coming out of the ground. Kind of creepy.

And then, a few days ago, as I was walking by this house, something made me look up and to my surprise I saw an entire collection of robots lining the side wall, each made from trash cans and coffee cans and old computer parts.

Now that was seeing the world through genre coloured glasses!

So I decided I wanted to take a picture of it and share it with you. There were people going about their business, so I felt strange taking a picture of someone’s yard. And, for the past three days, there has always been somebody walking by, so I never took that picture.

Well, it must have been divine providence. For, this morning, as I took off my headphones and started to prepare to take the picture, I saw Alexi sitting by his front door.

I must admit, I felt a little foolish. So I covered it up by saying, “I love your robots!”

He said if I loved those, he had more to show me. He disappeared into his house and then reappeared opening the gate to his back yard. He assured me he wasn’t a murderer and invited me to see is collection.

It was truly amazing. My pictures, taken with an old Nokia music phone don’t even begin to do this man’s art justice. I’ve uploaded the full gallery on The Genre Traveler’s Facebook page, but I’ve put a small taste for you to see below.

Alexi lives in Tempe, Ariz., and he creates all these works of art from junk he either buys on the cheap or friends and neighbors give him. In fact, his wife told me the neighborhood kids throw trash in his front yard for him to use!

Alexi told me he tried to get these on display at a Children’s museum but never heard back. If you know someone who would like to purchase one of these works of art, or someone who can get them displayed at a gallery or museum, please contact me and I’ll pass the good word on to him.

This is great stuff and worthy of attention. At least in my humble opinion.

Click on the images below to see a larger view.

For more pictures of Alexi’s robot and shark sculptures made from trash, visit The Genre Traveler’s Facebook page. Also, I’ve put in as many details as I could remember from my conversation with Alexi about each picture in the Facebook photo album.