Hubcap art by Don Lomax.

Who would have ever thought old hubcaps could be art? In this day and age of environmentally conscious living, that is exactly what is happening.

The Landfill Art Project is an initiative founded by Ken Marquis, a framer and gallery owner in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Its purpose is at once simple and profound—“to make great art out of rusted refuse,” he says, removing strain from the Earth’s landfills.

By trade, Marquis has always been involved with artists, but he’s also a car buff and an environmentalist. He wanted to create a project that would combine his passions and include artists from all over the world.

In August 2008, he began recovering old hubcaps from the 1930s–1970s and cleaning them up, making them a perfect canvas for artists. While he originally purchased 41 hubcaps at a car show, he soon sequestered 1,000 more.

Hubcap art by Joan Taubel.

His intention through the Landfill Art Project is to collect 1,041 finished pieces, compile them into a book, and create a traveling art show.

“This is the largest artist initiative ever,” he says. Marquis hopes to feature professional artists from each of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, from all of the 50 states, and from around the world.

Hub of creativity

Once Marquis connects with an artist, he sends him or her a primed hubcap—and he’s sent them all over the world. That is, until an artist from Ireland told him not to bother sending one; he claimed that they had enough junk themselves. Now, many of Marquis’ international artists recycle hubcaps from their own countries.

Maris Grove, an Erickson community in Glen Mills, Pa., will be giving the Landfill Art Project six finished hubcaps this fall.

It all started when Community Resources Coordinator Sally Christy saw an article in the Chester County Daily Local News about the project and thought it might speak to the residents of Maris Grove. “It was such an interesting project, and I started thinking outside the box on how to get the residents involved,” Christy says. A dozen Maris Grove artists jumped at the chance: Al Holcombe, Evelyn and Alvin Jacobs, Frank Kielar, Don Lomax, Sylvia Naylor, Bev and Hugh Purcell, Joan Reeves, Joan Taubel, Pat Thompson, and Betty Ulrey have since been experimenting with a different kind of canvas.

Betty Ulrey with one of her paintings.

The oil painter

Betty Ulrey has been a practicing artist since she was three years old, winning her first award for watercolors when she was a budding six. Decade after

decade, she has studied the craft, which blossomed into a career as an artist in advertising and led her to see the world through an artist’s eye. Honing her craft is a daily practice, one that’s usually done from the second bedroom of her Maris Grove apartment home, which has been converted into a studio. There, she works on cloth canvas with oil paints.

Ulrey decided to participate in the hubcap art project simply for fun and to explore a canvas she had never used before: a metal one.

Hubcap art by Betty Ulrey.

“I thought it was a nutty thing to do, but I decided to have some fun with it,” she says.

Picking the simplest hubcap she could find—some were quite ornamental and others were very rusty—she cleaned it up and sprayed it with a blue spray paint. Once it was primed, she created a sun and moon piece, the top half reflecting a light-filled landscape, the bottom half representing cosmic darkness (pictured, top right). After painting still-lifes and landscapes for many years, she says the hubcap reflects her artistic style, though she did incorporate some things she’s never used before—like glitter— just for fun.

“The practice of art is perfect because you can create art without using a lot of things,” Ulrey says. “If you see something that’s beautiful and it inspires you to do something, that’s great art.”

www.bettyulrey.com

Al Holcombe with a map he made out of recycled license plates.

The metal worker

Al Holcombe is used to working with metal. He’s been designing maps out of recycled license plates for the last nine years and has made more than 80 of them. He chose a more ornamental wheel covering, one that had 25 different spokes, allowing for 24 holes to be filled in with both car and motorcycle license plates (pictured on page 5, second from top right). Bits of old plates represent half of the country, each one independent but soldered together and connected by a flag in the middle of the wheel cover. Making it was something odd and different, sort of like the maps he creates.

“I just used what I use all the time,” Holcombe says. “To create art, you have to have the idea and the material to make it.”

Hubcap art by Al Holcombe

He, too, worked as a professional artist in advertising and spent the majority of his time promoting the automotive industry. While he has since retired, art continues to play an important part in his daily life. He frequents the wood shop at Maris Grove for his creative needs, and he shares his passion for art with his wife, painter Alva Holcombe.

www.unitedplatesofamerica.com

The 3-D couple

Bev and Hugh Purcell’s hubcap projects extended beyond the boundaries of the metal canvas.

“The first thing we did was run them through the dishwasher,” Mrs. Purcell laughs. Once the canvases were clean, they started creating. They had so much fun and were so focused on the project that they

Bev Purcell with her hubcap art.

completed theirs on a Sunday afternoon, something that was easy to do because of their discipline as professional artists.

Mrs. Purcell used Crayola Model Magic, a clay that sticks to itself, to take impressions of anything sitting around “collecting dust,” like a leaf fixture. Then she attached the clay creations to her metal canvas. Other things on her ornamental piece, like the bird and the hands, she sculpted herself.

Mr. Purcell designed his piece to be more art nouveau. In the middle is a sun face he sculpted with porcelain clay, a medium he’d never used before. Surrounding it are layers of cardboard covered in aluminum foil; the whole piece was silver-leafed and antiqued to give it more dimension and depth. Pieces of mirror were placed

Hubcap art by Bev Purcell.

around the face to reflect the light.

The two creations exemplify the range of possibilities presented by hubcaps (pictured on page 5, bottom right and second from bottom).

“When you’re working on a piece of art, you have a feel for what you’re doing and what you want it to look like, and if it doesn’t turn out how you want it, you experiment,” Mrs. Purcell says.

No matter how the experiment turns out, one thing is for certain: Maris Grove’s artists can’t stop creating, just as they can’t stop seeing things in the unique way they do. Like Mrs. Ulrey says, “It’s just in me,” and that is more than enough.

For more information about the art project, visit www.landfillart.org.

Hugh Purcell with his hubcap art.

hubcap art by Hugh Purcell.