Clare Graham

Clare Graham is a man on a mission. The Los Angeles artist has made it his life's purpose to awaken people to the potential of consumer refuse, proving that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

From his Highland Park studio, Graham creates large-scale art and design works from discarded soda-pop cans, Scrabble tiles, yardsticks, dog tags and jigsaw-puzzle pieces. The results are monumental. LA Times art critic Mayer Rus writes that “the grand scale, artistry, and monomania of Graham’s work elevates it from the cornball to the realm of the sublime.”

Graham comes by his passion honestly. Growing up in a large, working class family in a small town in Ontario, Canada, he was forced to make do with hand-me-down clothes and used materials. “I’m genetically programmed to deal with things after they’ve had a useful life elsewhere,” says Graham, adding, “My work is about simple processes done to the nth degree until the accumulation is significant.”

See more of Graham's work here.