The Reclaimed Room highlights unique art made from recycled materials

ByChris Bollini Localish logo
Thursday, April 22, 2021
The Reclaimed Room highlights beautiful art with a message
The Reclaimed Room is an art gallery dedicated to highlighting art made from recycled materials.San Francisco's The Reclaimed Room is an art gallery dedicated to highlighting art made from recycled materials.

SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco's Building Resources is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing reusable building and landscaping materials.

"If somebody is discarding something...sending it to a place like this and then someone else picking up and reusing it, either as is or repurposing it for some other function--that's what Building Resources is all about," Executive Director Ed Dunn explains.

In 2013, Building Resources decided to take a more creative direction in supporting reuse. "Since there was such a customer base of artists, having a gallery where we could show off potentially something that was maybe even found here and repurposed into art would be just sort of a no-brainer," Dunn shares.

In just eight years, The Reclaimed Room art gallery has hosted over 40 exhibits ranging from installations using repurposed saw blades to sculptures crafted from discarded plastic products.

"Literally the sky is the limit in terms of people's imagination," Dunn reveals. "You see all this potential that comes through here and then you see what goes up in the gallery, mind-blowing."

Artist Laura Diamondstone focuses her attention on working with bubble wrap.

"Bubble wrap was covering up almost half of the studio space," Diamondstone explains. "It wasn't going to go to the landfill, and I wasn't going to move again, so I had to deal with it somehow."

According to Dunn, art like Diamondstone's Bubble Wrap series is just one of many reasons to visit Building Resources.

"It's definitely a place to save money and is also a place to save the environment," Dunn offers. "And you can see some cool art in the gallery and maybe even buy it."

For more information on future exhibits, visit here.