Oct 22, 2019 – Sept 20, 2020

Philadelphia artist Lydia Ricci creates tiny everyday objects from scraps—materials like cardboard, paper, plastic—almost anything that otherwise would be thrown in the trash. She has collected scrap materials for over 30-some years. Her work has been described as a “miniature, magical world.” It’s a nostalgic world as most of the recreated scaled-down objects are of earlier decades—cars from the 70s and 80s, an old-school TV, cassette player, boom box, and rotary phone. While others are timeless yet show their well-used wear such as a grocery cart, swing set, vacuum cleaner, upholstered chair, and fishing rod.

Ricci’s craftsmanship reveals her process of hand-cutting and gluing the small scraps together. The bending, shaping, and layering of materials is evident as traces of corrections remain visible. Ricci embraces, as she says, “all of the imperfections,” the natural process of making an object scrap-by-scrap.

To further inform her mini-sculpture, Ricci typically activates them using text and short stop-motion animations. She builds a context whether through words or stage sets. These additional elements provide Ricci an opportunity to express her humor and convey, as she says, “to tell different stories about each object.”

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