I, like my father before me and his father, and his father's father collect junk. Whether it is retaining sentimental things for their future repurposing or seeing the potential in other people's rejects, I am a product of "The Great Deal,” a never ending search to reuse before you buy and to stretch the wallet as far as it can go modeled to me both in my father's shop as well as in his career as a conservationist biologist. It is through this lens that the lost arts of acquirement and innovation are influencing my art. Through Craigslist and thrift stores I locate pieces of everyday life that were once the hight of fashion but are now practically given away or discarded as next to trash. I then reinvent this furniture, taking it from the unused to the unusable, discovering the salvageable from within them. I want to utilize the basics of the original useful thing while presenting it in its current discarded wrappings. This juxtaposition of waste against the refurbish-able, or the steady yet constantly changing march of fashion and entropy across the utilitarian battlefield, is treated as a tool rather than a hinderance to the design. In marketing the designer is constantly working at creating the look of the future; the next best thing, the new and improved, or the timeless classic. The producer is more concerned with material and physical challenges for the future; durability, quality, cost effectiveness over longevity. Everyday these two camps- the visual/imaginative and the physical/practical, come together to form the world we interact with. It has been instilled in me to question 'why?' when the user no longer finds one or both of these aspects working and casts it aside. The energy originally put into these everyday things still remain, it may have changed into something less relevant or appealing than it once was but it cannot escape and therefore it can be harnessed and reinvested.