There are abundant examples of people who left their high profile jobs for the pursuit of their artistic tendencies but you will hardly find any person who left high profile job for collecting garbage from various cities. Yes, it may sound unreasonable but there is someone on the block, called Justin Gignac, a Manhattan based artist, who preferred to collect garbage from the nook and crannies of the city, and then transform them into artistic pieces rather than sitting in his air-conditioned office. This artist creates his own unique eco friendly masterpieces by putting the picked pieces of garbage into attractive plastic cubes.
Gignac has been collecting garbage from various cities of USA to form his own artistic creations. He started collecting trash in 2001 and so far has sold 1,300 of these decorative pieces to as much as 30 countries of the world. The prices of the pieces vary and you can buy them for an affordable $10 to exorbitant $1000. Many rugged baby shoes, torn tickets of various shows, confetti thrown at weddings and other events and juice cans have adorned houses of many people so far.
Gignac also specializes in creating decorative pieces from detritus of special occasions. He has captured almost all the gala events in his plastic cubes which took place during last ten years. Gignac has sold limited editions of Manhattan’s annual St. Patrick Day Parade to Obama’s 2009 inaugural function as president of USA. Recently Gignac created limited edition of Pieces made from confetti, feathers, beads and equality beads left on the roads of New York after the historic gay marriages celebrations. Gignac flew all the way from Manhattan to New York to collect the garbage and capture the historic moment in his own unique way.
Gignac has served as art director to various multinationals like IBM, Virgin Mobile and OfficeMax but left his high paying job in 2007 to do something more creative and meaningful, which celebrates greener ways to live on Earth, without inflicting any harm to the planet. Gignac also runs two brands names as “Needs for Sale” and “Wants for sale” which sales paintings of real world objects, which he creates with his wife at his home. Gignac’s paintings and plastic cubes can be bought online and from a Lower East Side boutique called ‘Reed Space’. Recently Gignac has also been asked by Jameson Whiskey to create commemorative cubes of their trademark bottle designs.
Via: Artinfo