A Look At The Overlooked: Artist Turns Street Debris Into Art

Michael Hagerty

Junk, trash and debris on our streets, highways, and sidewalks is – unfortunately – an inescapable part of city life, so much so that you might not even notice all that much after a while. But street debris hasn't escaped the eye of one local artist.

Gabriel Martinez used to live in New York and Washington D.C. before arriving in Houston a few years back. Everywhere he's lived, he'd find himself walking or taking the bus to and from jobs or school. And, at some point along the way, he started collecting things that you tend to only see from the vantage point of a pedestrian or public transit user – things like broken glass, pieces of wood and even trash. And he'd turn them into art.

Now, he has an exhibit at the Blaffer Art Museum on the University of Houston campus called Everything Turns Away Quite Leisurely.

Houston Matters producer Michael Hagerty went over to the gallery to look at some of the pieces, which range from a large canvas covered in salmon-colored paint made from a brick Martinez found, to a quilt of sorts made from oil-stained rags from a mechanic's shop that he stitched together.

Martinez explains his fascination with these kinds of found objects.