Joplin sculptor M. Justin Hale takes the cliché "One man's trash is another man's treasure" to a whole new dimension by creating art from objects he found in assorted places—-woods, fields, Shoal Creek, and even the trash.  Mounting these found sculptural objects on bases or framing them, he takes them out of their context and transforms them into art. For instance, a brake shoe from a semi truck becomes a crescent moon. Concentric rings from a red bud tree become a sunrise and a sunset.  A tangled mass of rebar, crumpled by a backhoe, becomes an abstract Madonna and Child figure.

      Crescent Moon [brake shoe from semi, found in Shoal Creek]

 

 

 

 

Early Carthage Man [rock found in woods near Carthage]