Dan Phillips, repurposes materials in order to create entire homes or 70-80% recycled products. Things that most people see as trash, he sees as a usable resources that he can feature in a home project he uses. He goes to trash heaps and recycling plants, to get the things they are ready to throw away or burn in order to use them and repurpose them. We see things as useless once they are broken or twiddled down to the scrapped pieces. He finds a way to be creative and give a purpose to the purposeless. Using fence handles as door locks, scrap wood to create a tub, tree branches to make a porch lining, beer caps to create a mosaic and all for the purpose of reusing them. He could go out and buy all new things, but why would he spend more money than necessary when he could just use something and make it into what he needs.
We often times see the warped objects as things we can no longer use, he showcases them and makes them beautiful. Like Dan stated, most people would take the whole window out and replace for one cracked window pane. It bothers people when thing aren’t proportional and perfectly patterned, when if we changed our perception and cracked all of them it wouldn’t seem so different that they weren’t suppose to be that way at all.
Dan Phillips, along with being economically smart and creative is boldly challenging the norm, not concerned with how people perceive his work. He is reusing the “ugly, old, and broken” and making into something beautiful again!
