Button Art Gives New Use To Lost Buttons

Passage

Many times throughout my life I've lost a button. Or two. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about these lost buttons. They are probably joined with the lost socks from the dryer and are together living in harmony as one big happy button and sock family. However, maybe all those lost buttons have found a new home with this artist!

Leotard

Artist Lisa Kokin makes fun artwork out of buttons and other miscellaneous objects. Some of the other items she uses include thread, rug canvas, waxed linen, imitation sinew and chicken wire.

Lisa received her BFA and MFA from the California College of the Arts. She started using some buttons in her previous work, but they were never the primary material until recently. She has been sewing since childhood – her parents were upholsterers - and the stitch now plays a major role in her work.

Blue State

Below is a detailed image of Blue State. Check out the different mediums she uses throughout the piece. It's amazing how it all blends in together to form the overall picture that it does.

Blue State (Detail)

“My work has always had an obsessive quality and this body of work is no exception. Every button is stitched to its neighbor to form a low-tech pixilated composition. Up close each piece is an abstract melange of colors and shapes; the further back one stands the more decipherable the image becomes. This interplay between abstraction and representation intrigues me. It is as though I am painting with buttons, building my palette as I go along, adding and subtracting until the interplay of colors and forms coalesces into a coherent image.”

Muse

Rescue

Front of the Bus (Rosa Parks)

Party Hat Diabolique

How cool would it have been to bring one of these home from art class instead of those boring macaroni sculptures? Now that would be something to display on the refrigerator!

Many thanks to Lisa Kokin!