The exhibit features pieces by fifty artists working with found objects - things other people have thrown away. All of the artwork relates to the theme of recreation. And the resulting pieces include musical instruments made out of plungers, hub cabs, and fishing line; a toy forklift made from real forks, bottle caps, and tin cans; and a combination pinball machine and clock made out of a discarded victrola case.

Bobby Hanson and Jody Kruskal playing on their plunger-horned instruments.

Philadelphia artist Randall Cleaver says he enjoys working in the plentiful arena of other people's garbage. "Hopefully what it does is make people see trash in a different light," he says. "Not so much as trash, but as an opportunity to use it for something else."

Cleaver specializes in making useful items out of discarded material, particularly clocks and lamps. He says these objects can go places ordinary art might not venture. "It makes the pieces one step more useful. Instead of being neat things in themselves, they also do something." Meanwhile, Cleaver says, people who purchase his clocks and lamps often have as much fun trying to figure out what they're made of as they do using them to tell time or brighten a room.

The exhibit also features works by Pennsylvania artists Neil Benson, Bill Lepley, Warren Muller, the Lovely Loney Metalworks, and more than forty other artists from around the country. Curator Bobby Hanson says making art and toys from trash is a way of showing that many everyday objects are useful long after they are thrown away.

Jody Kruskal plays his handmade Kora.

You can buy a can of tomatoes at the supermarket," he says. "And the purpose of the can is so you can get them home without making a mess on the car seat. And if that's the purpose then you open the can and dump the tomatoes out and the can loses its meaning. But if you look at it in another way, there's a dozen things you could easily do with that can that it would come in very handy for."

Hanson says making musical instruments from garbage might not solve all the world's ills, but it is a step in the right direction.

"We're not going to save the planet by saving a couple of tin cans and making them into drinking cups. But the kind of thinking where you start to see value in things and start to see them differently - I think that can help start to save the planet."

The exhibit at the Noyes Museum runs through April, and several special programs for adults and children are planned in the coming months, including workshops on making art and musical instruments from found objects. Contact the Noyes Museum for details.