Joseph Bennett

Click on the photo to see more

An artist's statement that I wrote nearly 20 years ago spoke of the basement too. "...standing in front of my father's workbench and admiring all that lay before me... tangled wire and rust. Dusty cabinets hiding treasures beneath faded cobwebs."

My first workbench was in that basement in Wilmington, Delaware circa 1975 (I was 10 years old). I'd find old boxes and put objects inside of them — nuts, pine cones and dried weeds, carpeting from the upstairs hallway, nails covered in rust.

And so began a lifelong love affair with scavenging. Turning other people's trash into treasures. Long nights spent in the basement — considering, placing, digging through boxes of objects that others had long discarded.

A lifetime of making assemblages. A lifetime of scavenging through stuff others have thrown away and making art out of it.  

Joseph Bennett