{"id":431529,"date":"2026-01-26T21:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T21:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/431529\/"},"modified":"2026-01-26T21:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T21:50:11","slug":"discarded-items-become-art-in-fountain-house-gallerys-latest-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/431529\/","title":{"rendered":"Discarded Items Become Art in Fountain House Gallery\u2019s Latest Exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"

A dangling sculpture of hangers. A violin wrapped in yarn, feathers and beads. A collage of Polaroids found on a New York City street \u2014 just some of the installations you can find at Fountain House Gallery\u2019s newest exhibition, Re\/Invention.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"BooArtist Boo Lynn Walsh, explores Maxx Reith\u2019s contribution, Precious Memories, which features found photographs from NYC with Angela Rodgers\u2019 yarn-covered violin Lady Sings the Blues on the opposite side of the wall. Photo: Brennan LaBrie<\/p>\n

All 30 pieces in the show were crafted with rescued or upcycled materials by New York City artists living with mental illness. Their canvases include a skateboard, a cello and a part from a printer, and materials range from charcoal to charging cables.<\/p>\n

Each piece tells a story of reinvention for both the materials and the artist that repurposed them, said show curator Vermillion. The Harlem-based artist pitched the exhibition two years ago and teamed up with Tara Sansone and John Cloud Kaiser of Materials for the Arts<\/a> to bring it to life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the complexity of reinvention, and the complexity of reuse,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Vermillion\u2019s vision for this show stemmed from her artistic practice, which is rooted in recycling materials. \u201cIt\u2019s not that I just reuse them so we don\u2019t throw them in the garbage, I reuse them because they inspire me and I can transfigure them and have them be a metaphor for how I feel,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"VermillionVermillion, who curated Fountain House Gallery\u2019s new exhibition Re\/Invention, with her contribution to the show, Brumhilde, made from reused tile fragments and thrifted plates. Photo: Bradford Scott Stringfield<\/p>\n

Her contribution to the show, titled Brumhilde and Edeltraud, features clocks \u2014 their bases composed of tile fragments from her old bathroom and pieces donated by friends, and the clocks created from porcelain plates she thrifted. One clock is set to New York time, the other Transylvanian time, demonstrating the separation between the artist and her homeland.<\/p>\n

Vermillion has found herself in a state of reinvention many times in her life \u2013 she moved from Romania to Hungary to work as a journalist, and then to Louisiana to pursue graduate school, before arriving in NYC in 2001. She discovered writing in Budapest, photography in Baton Rouge, and making art from reused materials in NYC, 10 years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She was forced into another period of reinvention last year, when a fire tore through her Harlem apartment. Living in temporary housing and mourning the home, the art and the cherished possessions she lost in the fire, art became her salvation. While she regained her footing, pieces of her old home \u2014 like fragments from her favorite chinaware \u2014 were reborn in her mosaics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMosaics are a metaphor for pulling the shattered bits of me, together replacing missing bits with makeshift yet similar findings and creating a functional wholeness, a new way of existing, a new useful cycle,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\nSusan Spangenberg\u2019s Beethoven Healing Doll, Michael Kronenburg\u2019s Mementos and Frankie Silva\u2019s Hanging Dual Polyhedrons are some of the works on display. Photos: Brennan LaBrie<\/p>\n

Vermillion points to fellow Fountain House artist Susan Spangenberg\u2019s Ludwig van Beethoven doll \u2014 composed of acrylic, chalk, charcoal and colored pencil on stuffed canvas \u2014 as an apt metaphor for the show and its artists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBeethoven reinvented himself somehow and managed to compose vigorous work, even if his physical health was damaged,\u201d she said. \u201cI relate that with Fountain House\u2019s artists \u2014 in spite of what happened to our minds, we reinvented ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Vermillion is well versed in bringing found materials into her work, it was a new direction for Michael Kronenburg, who specializes in painting and drawing comics.<\/p>\n

In one of his two featured pieces, the devil and a horde of demons are depicted on a metal plate Michael pulled from a discarded printer on a Crown Heights sidewalk. The image, painted in acrylic and ink, speaks to the banality of evil \u2013 with current national news serving as inspiration \u2013 and the \u201ccanvas\u201d represents a personal demon of Michael\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked for 24 years as a graphic designer and art director in the garment industry, so printers were the bane of my existence for pretty much my entire adult career,\u201d he said. \u201cAlways one damn thing after another\u2026printers and hell, they kind of go together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Re\/Invention, which runs through March 4, will also host a fashion show featuring upcycled materials, a terrarium building workshop, and a \u201cfix-it and repair\u201d session. The gallery is located at 702 9th Avenue. Hours and details on the exhibit can be found here.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dangling sculpture of hangers. A violin wrapped in yarn, feathers and beads. A collage of Polaroids found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,84875],"class_list":{"0":"post-431529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-fountainhouse"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}