What can be the possible uses of discarded old jeans ? Let’s list them :
- Recycling to create new fabric all over.
- Being distributed for use by lesser fortunate strata of society .
- Used for converting into bags, furnishings, shoes and more..
- Being used for insulation purposes.
- And many other similar uses.
But can old jeans be used to create art pieces which sell for thousands of pounds/dollars ?
Yes and this is exactly what an artist from London has done. An artist who uses old denim jeans to create pictures of London street scenes is taking the art world by storm.Ian Berry started making the denim pieces of art full-time after he was made redundant from his job as an art director.
The 28-year-old hasn’t looked back since and recently returned from an art exhibition in Miami, Florida where his work fetched £4,500 a piece.This is the guy who changed his stage name to Denimu and made a career out of turning jeans into works of art.
Ian conjures remarkably detailed portraits and urban landscapes using nothing more than discarded jeans. Over many weeks he cuts, stitches and glues using only the varying shades of the fabric to provide contrast and shadow. The effect is extraordinary.
Ian’s denim epiphany came during a trip back to his childhood home in Huddersfield. During a big clear-out session, Ian found himself staring at a big pile of unwanted jeans destined for the charity shop. Affectionate memories came flooding back, along with a wave of tactile enthusiasm for the fabric. At that point, he knew he’d found the key to his artistic career.
Among his collection are pictures of the London Underground, Piccadilly Circus, Hampstead Heath and Camden Town.Mr Berry was first inspired to take up his denim art when he found some old jeans while clearing his old room after returning home from university in 2006.To produce the works of art, Mr Berry cuts pieces of denim into precise shapes before painstakingly gluing them all together.Although he mainly uses old jeans he also likes to dabble with old denim jackets and dresses.
To achieve different looks, he sometimes uses bleach, either with a stencil and spray, and experiments with different colour jeans. Here are some of his art pieces ..
Finding the correct piece of denim, even for the smallest detail in his pictures, can take up to half a day.He has made around 80 pictures so far but says the rate at which he makes them will decrease as he spends more time on each individual piece. It goes on show how difficult it is to produce such art ..
And you thought that manufacturing jeans was a great art !!!
