One expert says that pallet art is “tired.” Can this be true?
Pallet art and crafts have become wildly popular in recent years. There are those who blame social media for the rapid rise and fall of such trends. “Etsy and the Internet have sped up the half-life of all our trends and fads to the point that they’re everywhere before we even realize we’re into them,” an article in Offbeat Home & Life cautioned a few years ago.
The focus of this article is to look for what I thought were the best examples of pallet art from over the last year. Surprising, I quickly stumbled across an account that suggested that pallet art is on the way out. The writer referred to the artistic expression of pallet upcycling as having become “tired.”
“Remember the first time you saw a piece of pallet art?” Valerie Ott wrote in The Spruce a few months ago. “How thrifty yet chic, you may have thought. How original! If you spend any time at all on Pinterest, however, you are probably way over the pallet trend.”
Excuse me? But how can pallet art movement now be in a downward trajectory, even as it seems more popular than ever? Little more than a year ago, pallet art was celebrated by the interior design community as a brilliant expression of Industrial or Rustic Chic design. Now, Ott suggests that the pallet is been overexposed. She said that there are other more inspirational material options such as scrap fabric, whitewashed wood and even decorated particle board!
For people close to the pallet industry, it seems unlikely there could ever be a case of pallet art overkill. But as I continued my scan of recent examples of pallet art from over the last year or so, I did see a grain of truth to what Ott is saying. There is a lot of art that looks familiar in terms of stencils, inspirational messaging and simple, folksy ambience.
Less Obviously a Pallet and Not Tired at All
There has been some pallet art that is more eye catching than the rest. And to my way of thinking, it isn’t tired at all. The artistic creations of Thomas Dambo, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based artist, stand out as being quite literally bigger than life.
Dambo said that he understands what the critic (Ott) is talking about when it comes to pallet art seeming tired. “Like with all other design/fashion there are changes, and new things become trendy. So, no, we probably won’t see as many new cafes with pallet furniture, or at least not the same kind of pallet furniture that there has been so much of lately,” Ott observed.
For Dambo, working with pallets is about getting the most out of the products we harvest in nature. He completely disassembles them. “I don’t see wood as a building material going out of fashion anytime soon. The tendency in architecture and design is to go back and use more wood.”
“So, I think we will see many of these people who have worked with “whole pallets” as a building material starting to disassemble their pallets more.” By more fully deconstructing pallets, the artist is open to utilizing the material for a wider range of artistic expression. When they more fully deconstruct pallets, Dambo stated, many people will probably not even realize that a certain object is made from disassembled pallets. They will simply “see it as an object.”
Dambo’s art is a collaborative process. He recently held several workshops for children around the Copenhagen area where he worked with them to create funny benches – but not necessarily benches made to last for the long term. “The point of the project is more to teach the kids, where and how to build something out of pallets and other wood found in local containers. And for this I believe broken or disposable pallets are great, because they are found all over the world and in pretty much unlimited supply.”
Find out more about Thomas Dambo’s work at www.thomasdambo.com.
Art from “Firewood”
Aside from Dambo, a few other artists responded to our interest in showcasing their work. One of these people was Jodi Knap. “I love to create unique paintings and projects that capture people’s attention made from what my son calls firewood,” wrote Knap. Her forest landscapes are painted on upcycled pallet deck boards. Similar to Dambo’s work, the focus is on the artistic expression with the use of pallet material less obvious than in other common examples of upcycled pallet art. Contact Knap at White Birch Studio (https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheWhiteBirchStudio).
Another of our favorite pallet artists is TaSha Franklin of Montana Pallet Paintings. “This is one of my favorites,” she wrote on her website (www.montanapalletpaintings.com). “A friend asked me to paint this for her hubby’s birthday. The original pic shows one of her sons, their dog (that passed away), and her husband. She asked me if I could include her other son inside the truck as well. I think it turned out awesome!”
Bottom line, while some pallet art may be getting a little repetitive, it continues to evolve in exciting ways.
