Off the wall and clasped on neck
Four years ago, Daniel Dowson had the idea of turning crumbling graffiti into pieces of jewellery. He now hopes it will inspire others to rethink what they see as waste materials, Michael Crossland reports.
DANIEL Dowson sees graffiti as an art form. After spending years around skateparks, however, he also found in it a material from which he would form his own channel for selfexpression. Daniel creates pieces of jewellery from scraps of paint which come away from walls where graffiti or street art has been created. After finding the raw material, he works on it to uncover the marble-like layers of paint hidden throughout, created by the layering of months, or in some cases years worth of paint which has been sprayed on to walls.
He has titled the resulting material Re-fitti, a mix of the terms reusable and recycled graffiti, which he subsequently mounts onto metal to create jewellery.
Daniel now hopes that his use of what would otherwise be a waste material will inspire others to think differently about what they see around them.
“There are really surprising ways of reusing materials that we think of as waste,” he says. “I’m keen to show how something that is otherwise left on the ground, and that can form into bits of plastic which likely aren't good for the environment, can be used to make things.
“I really think it's important that we look at materials and consumables such as clothing or food in unexpected ways, and that we develop a way of looking at things a little bit differently.
“That's what I want to be able to do, to inspire people to see things differently, because there's a lot more material out there, I’m sure of it.”
Originally from Wensleydale, Daniel moved back to Sheffield last month, where he previously went to university. The city, he says, is an ideal spot for finding the material from which he creates his artworks.
“I was skating around Mount Pleasant Park and Devonshire Green and I noticed that near the graffiti spots there was all this dried paint on the floor,” he says.
“I picked some of it up and just noticed that it was made of thousands of layers of multi-coloured paint and was incredibly beautiful.
Being an artist and designer, I realised