One person’s trash is another’s art

“Wally Warren: City of Dreams” and “Sherrill Edwards Hunnibell: Altered Books” at Maine Coast Artists, Rockport, through May 15.

If we didn’t have artists among us, nails might always be hardware, high heels might be just shoes, and things like corks and twigs could be mundane to the point of becoming invisible.

Thankfully, visionaries such as Waterville’s Wally Warren and Massachusetts-based Sherrill Hunnibell are around to rip everyday objects out of context and make them new. The two very different artists both have excellent shows at Maine Coast Artists this month, and both make us consider familiar things in radically new ways.

Warren is a trash picker whose top-story exhibition looks like grandma’s attic, with the contents torn apart and reassembled by a tornado with a fondness for practical jokes. He uses everything: diced cigarette lighters and sandals, computer keys and cut-up shopping carts.

It could be chaos, the garbage after raccoons have had at it. Instead, Warren’s sculptures have an elegance greater than the sum of their parts. Among the most beautiful works are “City of Dreams I and II,” trash mosaics where blue rivers snake through urban aerial maps.

Elsewhere, a cork-covered skyscraper stretches skyward, topped with a pineapple bedpost, and parts of a vacuum cleaner and a rocking horse combine to make a kind of recycled prayer station.

Downstairs, prayer is central to Hunnibell’s exquisite mixed-media works. Each piece began with an old book salvaged from a flea market, then made almost unrecognizable under layers of gold leaf, cut paper, metal, twigs, paint and pearls.

The series was inspired by the Book of Hours, a prayer book used in Middle Ages meditations. In one, razor blades are strapped with copper wire against the pages. In another, a cluster of iridescent nail heads bursts from the page like a copper chrysanthemum.

One theme found in the layers is the loss of meaning. When the words are obscured, is a book still a book? If ritual itself, the act of prayer, is pinned down under glass like a butterfly specimen, is it still spiritual?

(162 Russell Ave., 236-2875, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday)

“Boxes,” assemblage art by Joan Proudman, at Bell the Cat cafe, Belfast, through April 30.

There’s nothing new about the art of found objects, which can be seen in a Belfast coffeehouse this month as well as at Maine Coast Artists. It’s not a new medium, but it hasn’t lost its special visual power, unique to an art form that employs objects as familiar to us as our own family members.

A sculpture that makes a potent symbol of a chair leg just like the ones we’ve known all our lives sparks a different level of recognition than would a painting of furniture.

Joan Proudman’s boxes range from an old wooden medicine cabinet, painted inside with a diamond pattern and dragonflies, to containers that look like picture frames, knickknack shelves and display cases. Her materials were salvaged from sites near her home in Freedom.

In some pieces, the assembly of objects wasn’t selective enough, and their power is reduced as a result. A cow skull with dried roses in its eye sockets is plenty interesting without the distracting topping of a garden spade and ornate iron scrollwork.

The best boxes are the product of a unique vision, as in “Doll in the Thicket,” in which a gauzy doll is disturbingly strapped in and mashed down by wire and twigs. In “Chinese Butterflies,” a white-enameled box containing a single carved post is alive with glued-on paper moths.

(53 Church St., 338-2084, open daily except Sunday)

“1999 Student Juried Exhibition” at the University of Maine Museum of Art, Orono, through April 30.

College isn’t thought of as a time to play it safe, and it would be disappointing if UMaine art students weren’t taking chances with their work. The current student show offers invigorating evidence — more than in the past — that some of these young artists are creating out on the edge.

There’s a shoe, size 8, made entirely, and with surprising delicacy, from masking tape. There’s a giant, hinged model of a Willy Wonka chocolate bar, and a dress sculpted from brown paper bags.

Thoughtful, unexpected sculpture is strongly in evidence. You may not know what’s sociopolitical about “Socio-Political Tool Box for St. Nicholas,” but you’ll admire Terri Kelley-Palin’s roughed-up, buttermilk-colored sled and its three small drawers full of striped peppermints.

In “Just As Is,” Sara Ellen McPherson combines beach stones, old wooden packing crates and an Etch-A-Sketch toy to evocative effect.

There are beautiful accomplishments in traditional media as well, and some mysterious, new media such as “digital collage.”

The award for best of show was deservingly given to Andy Hamm for the large, natural-toned painting “All Three,” in which classical figures and architecture co-exist with modern grids.

(Carnegie Hall, 581-3255, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday)

Seen shorts: Bangor’s own Dave Musselman has a fine pair of watercolors at the Intown Arts Center and Gallery this month, a camp scene and a stunning nude. While there, check out Viki Kennedy’s two unearthly blue acrylics, “Lily Ladies” and “Main Street, Houlton.” (42 Columbia St., Bangor, 990-2990, open noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.)