There's a lot of salvaged materials a home remodeler can find at Construction Junction in Point Breeze.
But an artist like Cheryl Capezzuti, of Morningside, can find a whole world inside a discarded electric box.
Capezzuti was among 19 artists participating in a salvage arts festival Saturday hosted by Construction Junction, a nonprofit warehouse-store promoting conservation through the reuse of used and surplus building materials, and the artists group Salvage Artists Linking Venues and Opportunities, or SALVO.
"I saw the boxes laying around, and they seemed like the right place to build my imaginary world," said Capezzuti, 33. "They're hidden all over the warehouse. I'm sending people on a treasure hunt to find them."
The festival celebrated the opening of a 4,000-square-foot gallery featuring the creations of 25 artists who work in used and recycled materials.
Connie Cantor, a founding member of SALVO, said Construction Junction is "like a playground for creative people."
"All the materials are very abundant and very inexpensive, and they don't tell you what to do. Salvage is a very free way of working," she said. "Anything can be art."
Outside, Jonathan Kline, 29, of Lawrenceville, was using wood from a 100-year-old house to build a "sort of" house in the parking lot, that can be interpreted "however one wishes."
"Part of the idea is this will look like an old house that was taken apart," said Kline, a Carnegie Mellon University architecture professor. "It's to get you to think about salvage and its possibilities."
Mike Gable, executive director of Construction Junction, said artists are a small but important part of his market. While artists have always shopped there, the formal associations were formed about a year ago, he said.
"A lot of artists are drawn to things the average home remodeler has no idea what to do with. It's materials we might even throw away," he said, noting Capezzuti's use of the electric boxes, which can't be functionally reused because of building codes. "She's finding creative uses for materials. That's what we're all about."
Serendipity, or just happening to come across the right thing for the right job, played a big part in the art being created yesterday. Jamie Perkins, 49, a Pittsburgh Center for the Arts visiting resident artist, relied only on what he could find at Construction Junction to build "The Stupid Machine," a gravity hammer based on a Leonardo da Vinci design.
Looking at a part, he said, "We have no idea where this piece of wood came from, or what its previous use was. It's here today, and we get to convert it."
Cantor has high hopes for the future of salvage art at Construction Junction.
"This is like planting a seed. If the ground is fertile, which we hope it is, it will grow," she said. "We'll find out."
