This was made during the pandemic to encourage students about the extraordinary potential of making art out of anything, in any circumstance.

1. How art can reinterpret seclusion, repurpose objects,
and reanimate the spirit!
Art Creating Worlds

2. What I love about art is,
It never lets us take anyone, any place or anything for granted.
In Art’s eyes, anyone, ANY place or anything can be precious, magical and
amazing.
Inspiration and beauty are everywhere!

3. Just a grain of rice…?
Hasan Kale

4. Just a toilet paper roll...?
Yuken Teruya
J
e
s
s
i
c
a
D
r
e
n
k
Anastassia Elias
şakir gökçebağ
Junior Fritz Jacquet

5. Just Fire?
Steven Spazuk
Michael Papadakis

6. Just an old flip-flop?
Tony Capellan
Ocean Sole

7. Just some junk lying around the house?
Tom Deninger
Zac Freeman

8. Reduce, reuse, re-WHOAH!
Sayaka Ganz

9. Just leaves? Just sticks and stones?
Andy Goldsworthy

10. “All I have is a pencil and paper,” you say?
Salavat Fidai
Sue Blackwell
Jessica Drenk
Yulia Brodskaya
Molly Gambardella
Pippa Dyrlaga
Katsuta Kyohei

11. You get it. Amazing art can be made out of anything.
But don’t forget the anywhere and by anyone.
Here are a few artists who also persevered in making art in astonishing
circumstances:

12. Zehra Dogan
1989- Amed, Turkey

13. Zehra Dogan
In 2017, Zehra Dogan, a young writer, founder and editor of INHA, an outspoken feminist organization, was
arrested and jailed for almost three years because she painted a picture of a Kurdish city being destroyed by
Turkish troops. During her imprisonment, she painted on sheets with plant material and blood. (Goldstein, C. 2019.
Artnet news)
During her imprisonment, she did not give up on art- far from it! Besides handwriting and distributing a prison
newspaper, she collected feathers, donated hair from her cellmates, and bits of string to make paintbrushes:
Deprived of her art materials and “squashed like sardines” in the dank 20m2 cell she shared with dozens of other women and a
two-year-old baby, the thought of not being able to draw and paint was “another form of torture”.
But instead of sinking into despair, she became increasingly creative and resourceful.
She made a studio out of a dimly lit stairwell. She drew on newspapers, cigarette papers and even her fellow inmates’ backs. She rifled
through rubbish for possible pigments in the scraps of leftover food. Coffee grinds, tea bags, cigarette ash, potato peelings, pomegranate
juice – all of these were used in her work. She was struck by the solidarity and camaraderie of her fellow inmates. They brought her
possible pigments in their scraps of leftover food, they clustered around her as she worked and murmured encouragement, and they gave
her locks of their hair to make brushes with. "I had never used such precious brushes in my life,’” writes Dogan, in her letters from prison
to her friend Naz Oke, an editor at the webzine Kedistan, that have been published in French for the first time, "Nous aurons aussi de
beaux jours". (We will also have beautiful days). “Each hair tells a story of resistance, each one is a relic of a rebellious woman.”
(Wilkens,C. 2019. France24.com)

14. Richard Phillips
Contemporary Michigan, USA

15. Richard Phillips
“Richard Phillips spent more years behind bars than any other wrongfully imprisoned person in America. In 1972
he was convicted of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit first degree murder, a crime he did not commit,
which carried a sentence of prison without the possibility of parole...EVER.
After serving 38 years, a man named Richard Polombo, also accused, admitted he lied. He never knew Phillips,
never met him, never planned a murder with him. This was in 2010. However, Richard Phillips didn’t hear about
this until The University of Michigan Innocence Clinic, headed by Dave Moran, got wind of the admission by
Polmbo in 2014, four years after the admission.
In 1990 Richard Phillips began to paint. He painted to stave off the loneliness. He painted to break up the
monotony. He painted to fill the long days. He painted to keep his heart soft and hope alive.”
from the Richard Phillips Gallery artist statement

16. Frida Kahlo
1907-1953 Mexico City, Mexico

17. Frida Kahlo
At age six, Kahlo contracted polio; a long recovery isolated her from other children and permanently damaged
one of her legs, causing her to walk with a limp.
At age 19, she was involved in a near-fatal bus accident, suffering multiple fractures throughout her body,
including a crushed pelvis, and a metal rod impaled her womb. She spent one month in the hospital immobile,
and bound in a plaster corset, and following this period, many more months bedridden at home. During her
long recovery she began to experiment in small-scale autobiographical portraiture, turning her focus to art.
Kahlo spent hours confronting existential questions raised by her trauma including a feeling of dissociation
from her identity, a growing interiority, and a general closeness to death. “I paint self-portraits because I am so
often alone,” said Kahlo. (the art story, 2020)

18. Richard Dadd
1817-1886 Kent, England

19. Richard Dadd
In his twenties, Richard Dadd was the most promising student of a prestigious art academy in France, and the
leader of “the Clique” of up-and-coming art stars. This all changed for good when he went on a trip to Asia and
started having schizophrenic delusions in Egypt that demons were watching him and that the son of Osiris wanted
a sacrifice from him. He ended up killing his own father, physically attacking several other people and spending the
rest of his life in asylums for the criminally insane, most notably the notorious “Bedlam” (Bethlem Asylum) in
Victorian England.
He continued painting his entire life, however, and although many of his academically-impressive paintings
involved fantastical elements, particularly fairies, his caretakers found his art completely separate from his
delusional nature. This goes against the romantic notion of mad artists exorcising their demons through their work.
Even more impressive was how he was able to paint intricate scenes inspired by his travels from only basic
sketches he had done or entirely from memory. (Conliffe, C. 2018)

20. Maud Lewis
1903-1970 Nova Scotia, Canada

21. Maud Lewis
Maud Lewis lived a life that few would envy. Born in rural Nova Scotia in 1903, Lewis suffered from a series of birth
defects that left her fingers painfully deformed, her shoulders hunched and her chin pressed into her chest. She
spent most of her adult life as a virtual recluse in a cramped one-room house that had no running water or
electricity. For more than three decades, the diminutive Lewis eked out a living rendering colorful oil paintings on
the most primitive of surfaces — including particleboard, cardboard and wallpaper — which she sold for a few
dollars each. Her miserly husband, Everett, often squirrelled away her slim profits, hiding the cash under the
floorboards or in jars buried in the garden. At the age of 67, Lewis — who had suffered lung damage due to
constant exposure to paint fumes and wood smoke — contracted pneumonia and died in hospital. She was buried
in a child's coffin and laid to rest in a pauper's grave.
The tragic circumstances of Lewis’s life do not, however, tell the whole story. Though painfully shy, Lewis had by all
accounts a sweet disposition and a smile that charmed everyone who visited her brightly decorated home in the
village of Marshalltown, on Nova Scotia's northwestern shore. More to the point, she left behind hundreds of
exuberant paintings and artifacts that, since her death in 1970, have turned her into an icon of the so-called folk
art movement .“People are intrigued by her because she created these beautiful, joyful paintings in spite of the
adversities she faced,” says Bernard Riordon, director of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. “It's an example of the
triumph of the human spirit.” (Bergman, B. 1997.)

22. Vincent Van Gogh
1853-1890 The Netherlands/France

23. Vincent Van Gogh
“Van Gogh is now one of the most well-known post-Impressionist painters, although he was not widely appreciated in his lifetime.
Vincent Van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Zundert in the southern Netherlands, the son of a pastor. In 1869, he took his first
job, working in the Hague branch of an international art dealing firm. He began to write to his younger brother Theo, a correspondence
which continued for the rest of Van Gogh's life.
Van Gogh's job took him to London and Paris, but he was not interested in the work and was dismissed in 1876. He briefly became a
teacher in England, and then, deeply interested in Christianity, a preacher in a mining community in southern Belgium.
In 1880, at the age of 27, he decided to become an artist. He moved around, teaching himself to draw and paint and receiving financial
support from Theo. In 1886, Van Gogh joined Theo in Paris, and met many artists including Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro and
Gauguin, with whom he became friends. His style changed significantly under the influence of Impressionism, becoming lighter and
brighter. He painted a large number of self-portraits in this period.
In 1888, Van Gogh moved to Provence in southern France, where he painted his famous series 'Sunflowers'. He invited Gauguin to join
him but they soon began to quarrel and one night, Van Gogh threatened Gauguin with a razor. Deeply remorseful he then cut off part
of his own ear.
This was the first serious sign of the mental health problems that were to afflict Van Gogh for the rest of his life. He spent time in
psychiatric hospitals and swung between periods of inertia, depression and incredibly concentrated artistic activity, his work reflecting
the intense colours and strong light of the countryside around him. On 27 July 1890, again suffering from depression, Van Gogh shot
himself. He died two days later. “ (contributor, BBC History, bbc.co.uk

24. Dahlov Ipcar
1917=2017 Vermont/Maine USA

25. Dahlov Ipcar
Ipcar was born November 12, 1917, in Windsor, Vermont, the younger of two children, to parents William and Marguerite Zorach. She
was raised in Greenwich Village, New York City; attended the City and Country School, Caroline Pratt's famous progressive school; and
grew up surrounded by bohemian influences. Encouraged by her parents, she started painting at a very young age. She briefly
attended Oberlin, dropping out after only one semester, frustrated with the academic restrictions on her artistic expression.
In 1936, at the age of 19, Dahlov married Adolph Ipcar, a young man hired to tutor her in math for her college tests. They spent that
year in New York City, with Adolph working as a math tutor while Dahlov taught art two days a week. The following winter, they
decided to move into the extra farm house on her parents' property in Georgetown, Maine, and started a farm of their own. They
became modern-day subsistence farmers: growing their own food, raising animals and their two sons, and selling eggs and milk on the
side for extra money. Dahlov continued painting throughout her life as both a source of pleasure and income. In addition to painting,
she wrote four fantasy novels, wrote and/or illustrated numerous children's books, and crafted three-dimensional cloth sculptures.[1]
Her marriage lasted until 2003, when Adolph died at the age of 98 after a brief illness. Dahlov Ipcar died on February 10, 2017, at the
age of 99. (Wikipedia, 2020)
What blows my mind about Ipcar, (besides her stunning illustrative style), is how she chose to live secluded with her family, on a
self-sustaining farm (for many years without even electricity), working full-time, farming and taking care of her children,
and still managing to produce an astounding body of artwork , illustrations and even books! Not only was she capable of
managing all of this, but despite her reclusive, domestic lifestyle, she was extremely successful in the art world!

26. Bill Watterson
958- Washington D.C./Ohio USA

27. Bill Watterson
As author of Calvin and Hobbes, the beloved comic strip about a mischievous 6-year-old and his
stuffed tiger, Bill Watterson's work appeared in more than 2,400 newspapers worldwide. He was the
youngest person to receive the National Cartoonists Society's highest honor, the Reuben Award — a
prize he would win a total of three times. Throughout his career, Watterson consistently resisted
pressure from publishers to merchandise his comic, believing that it would devalue the characters.
Despite a large and passionate fan following, Watterson retired the strip in 1995, citing frustration
with the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. He has since retreated from the public eye,
declining interviews and public appearances and refusing to sign autographs or license his
characters. For a time, Watterson stashed autographed copies of his books on the shelves of a local
family-owned bookstore — until fans started selling them for higher prices. It remains to be seen if
the world will hear from Watterson again. (Time USA, 2019)