Incredible Star Wars Sculptures Made From Recycled Technological Junk

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Star WarsOkay, here is the best thing that you’re likely see all day, that is unless you’re preferred football team managed to squeak out a last second victory on the first weekend of the NFL season (Seahawks, Saints, and Jets fans, I’m looking at you). Artist Gabriel Dishaw takes discarded junk, things that would otherwise wind up in the landfill or on the scrap heap, and turns this left over junk into amazing works of art. They’re made even better by the fact that they’re not only beautiful in their own right, but they happen to depict some of your favorite characters from the Star Wars universe.

Dishaw takes unwanted pieces of technology, things like typewriters, out of date computers, and even the occasional adding machine (remember those?), dismantles them, and reassembles them in incredible ways. On his website, he says, “My passion for working with metal and mechanical objects has been crucial in the evolution of my art and freeing my imagination. It provides me an avenue to express myself in a way that both helps me and the environment. The metal has the ability to resonate the very fantasies and thought processes that I envision.” This isn’t recycling, Dishaw calls it “up cycling.”

Just take a moment to peruse Dishaw’s sculptures for yourself (there is even more awesomeness on his site). You have various incarnations of Darth Vader, including a steampunk Vader, samurai Vader, Vader with big ass horns, and, my personal favorite, Vader head mounted on a freaking tank. How can you not love that? If I had a mantle to put it on, that would be front and center, the main attraction. There is such an wonderful texture to these pieces with the way the different shaped keys fit together, the random scraps and gears and capacitors matched up, and the various colors of wire adding sharp bits of punctuation. My mind can’t even conceive of how you would come up with ideas like these.

And then there are the C-3PO figures. Everyone’s favorite gold plated protocol droid gets a similar up cycling treatment. You can’t help but feel like you’re getting a peek under the hood, so to speak. It looks like the outer shell has been removed and you’re getting a hidden look at the inner workings.

Dishaw’s work is for sale, though some of the artifacts have already been sold. This kind of craftsmanship doesn’t come cheap, however, and each statue will set you back somewhere between $400 and $1000. That may sound like a lot, hell, it is a lot for most of us, but if you have some extra cash laying around, and want to add something truly unique and spectacular to your memorabilia collection, you could do a lot worse than forking over the dough for one of these bad boys.