Market St at 6th in San Francisco, Ca
Erik Otto is a Bay Area native based in San Francisco. His work is found more often inside than out. He pushes his boundaries creating abstract art and installations exploring and using a variety of materials and mediums.
This is an excerpt from an interview he did with Dirty Laundry
What’s the importance of using reclaimed materials in your work?
Working with reclaimed materials provides an opportunity to improvise with something that had a life before I came in the picture. Simply by the act of re-purposing, you get to rethink the possibilities from its intended function, which is a creative act in itself. Being open to seeing everything as useful can be a great skill to achieving unexpected results that may have not happened, if I always limited myself to conventional tools and materials.
What started out as a cost-effective environmentally conscious decision eventually led me to discover the abundance of material that is out there for the taking and that there really is no limit to what you choose to create with. And this way, if something doesn’t work out, you can always toss it back into the sea of waste at no real financial loss.