From waste to art - the fantastic carved wood sculptures made by Benny Graham are all made from waste material and wood offcuts that otherwise would have been thrown away or incinerated. This is the most beautiful result of sustainability meeting creativity if you ask us.

Ben Graham grew up in Switzerland and always had access to nature and wood to carve. When camping he would often be found carving little animals out of the wood intended for the fire. These figurative sculptures have become ever more abstract over the years and since the pandemic, he's dedicated a lot more time to sculpture; creating totally abstract and ever more complex shapes with a wider selection of tools and techniques.

Ben Graham's sculptures are made in a two step process where first little scraps of plywood are joint together in interesting angular shapes. Then comes the slow creative process of carving the wood into smooth and fluid forms using rotary tools and hand tools. Ben also creates concrete sculptures that are an even further step by casting concrete into waste-wood shape.

We have an utter love for wood artworks because it's such a lively material with beautiful natural patterns. We also have a great respect for the gradual process that takes time as you need to read the organic traces and remove a lot of material. The sustainable aspect of reusing waste material adds another dimension Ben's artworks.

Ben himself draws inspiration from that every culture has an idiom, truism or saying about trying to reduce the waste we create.

Mottainai!
Des einen Leid ist des anderen Freud
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

"I hope that my sculpture can provide a gentle reminder to try and live this ethos, and create something beautiful out of something that otherwise would have met a much more unhappy fate. We live in a world of right angles and straight lines. Everything regular. Everything immaculately polished. My work stands in direct opposition to that world, created from the very waste generated by the industrial processes that leave us all with identical, single use products", says Ben Graham.