Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion - Born-Again Discards


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Text by Joseph M. Schuster

Bottle caps, broken typewriter keys, a vintage tin can—most of us would toss them out. But in the playful hands of Mark Brown, typewriter keys become insect legs and tin cans become top hats. “I look at useless things and see them for what they might become,” he says.

Friends always donate materials, such as a heart that became a head, (a) “My wife’s students collected jar lids for the robot’s legs,” (b) “People feel better giving me things instead of throwing them out.” (c) The artist in his Easthampton, Massachusetts, studio.

“Incorporating clocks gives the pieces a functionality people like,” Mark says. He likes materials that echo the past, and prefers analog clocks to digital. “Because we see the sweep of the second hand, it reminds us that we’re not just telling time, but also marking its passage.”

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