During a recent visit to the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, we came across this artwork by Mike Wilkins titled "Preamble" (to the U.S. Constitution) made from license plates. With all the transplants to DC, we love the idea of reusing out-of-state license plates as artwork or home decor. In our house tour of Helen's DC condo, we showed Helen's clever use of an old license plate as a toilet paper holder (shown again below the jump)...
What else could you do with old license plates?
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Comments (11)
You can find stuff made from old license plates at uncommongoods.com
When junk becomes art, its the first sign civilization is in decline.
that not art.
Looks like Applebees.
Nonsense. Folk art through the ages has used found objects. The Jingle Dress used for some Native American dances gets its jingle from rolled tobacco lids - a beautiful use for an ugly product. Tin cans can be transformed into pierced lanterns, and some really lovely South African lamps of flowers from plastic bottles were posted earlier here on AT. They're all brilliant ways to keep trash out of landfills.
You can like it or not, but don't worry about the decline of civilization.
I like it. It must've taken forever to do this.
Unshined shoes; junk as art--well, where are we, and what are we doing in this handbasket?!
When my grandpa passed away, I inherited his collection of license plates -- all 50 states, most of them from mid-century or earlier. I've been wanting to do something with them, but didn't want to look like, well, Applebee's. (Altho I do think junk can make beautiful art, Applebee's doesn't cut it.) Any suggestions?
My grandparents hung old license plates on the vertical part of their wooden stairs leading to the basement. It added some visual interest to an otherwise bare space. The plates were uniformly red with white lettering, so there was no "Applebees" random effect.
I wish we'd taken the plates with us when we sold the house - the licenses were from the 30's.
A former friend of mine had license plates hanging all over his house. One wall was nothing but the 50 states. Unfortunately, he was also a slob and a pack rat, so I don't remember his license plate art fondly.
Those are all very cool and very folk art. Are they something I would want to have in my home? No. However I can appreciate the time, resources and effort that went into making them.