**Janai Ford, left, and Cristina Lumppio place a piece by Lumppio in the JXTA gallery before the exhibit’s Dec. 7 opening.** Photo by David Pierini

By David Pierini, Editor

West Broadway Avenue is full of history. Walk slowly up and down this well-traveled passage, it may offer the wanderer mysterious fragments of the past.

Seven contemporary art students from JXTA in North Minneapolis rescued bits and pieces from a life of litter, giving everyday detritus a new identity of art on a gallery wall. Led by their instructor Cameron Downey, the students scoured West Broadway for discarded objects and assembled sculptures from their finds.

They created an exhibit titled “Encounters,” which will hang in the new JXTA headquarters through Jan. 10.

Artists throughout history have created works with found objects, incorporating items into sculpture, collage, and encaustic painting. It remains a popular tool to make a statement about contemporary society, play on nostalgia, or to convey humor and absurdity by juxtaposing unrelated elements.

“I wanted to give everybody the chance to hone their skills with their voices as artists and know what it feels like to be in conversation with the landscape,” Downey said. “And collecting things, changing the life of an object is also a way to be in conversation community.”

The seven artists – Ella Alden Pope, Cristina Lumppipo, Janai Ford, Henry Adams, Myles Pohlman, Harmonee Harrison and Tano Unpingco – took unique approaches to searching for the materials and why they created their final pieces.

**Henry Adams listened for the sound of items for a percussive piece that includes drum sticks and an invitation to play.** Photo by David Pierini

Some found meaning in each object, in a way allowing something whisper its secret, while others gathered and gathered, waiting for time in the studio to decide what to use. There was also a lot of swapping back and forth as artists saw the possibilities of arranging random objects into a cohesive piece.

“I felt like the things, instead of waiting for one to speak to me, they are speaking at the same time vying for my attention,” Myles Pohlman said. “I found like random computer bits, a bunch of security tags, there was this really cool, black, almost chromatic glass… there’s just so much interesting stuff, it was really hard to navigate.”

Among the items found were slats of wood, a Nike shoe, scrap metal from both a washer and an oven, an entire marble countertop, a smoke alarm and several containers. How all of those things became art can only be answered by a visit to the JUXTA gallery before the show closes.

Henry Adams used objects that sounded musical when tapped with drumsticks. Music is so important to him, it only seemed natural for him to create percussive piece that includes sticks for the viewer to play (Caution: this is the only piece in the show where such a tactile interaction is allowed).

Ella Alden Pope used the white Nike shoe with red swoosh. She enshrined it in rusted metal and split the toe box to give it a mouth full of metal teeth.

“I wanted to add an element of social relevance,” Alden Pope said of the shoe. “I really wanted to talk about consumption and how that affects the Black community. My art stems from my own identity and and I think with this piece, I found a way to value something that’s perceived as discarded.”

What was thrown away on West Broadway gets second life as art