Pleasant Hugh Studio/Simone Wilson Designs

Simone R. Wilson is a self-taught artist born in Atlanta, Georgia. She is an obsessive scavenger and rescuer of materials from the past and this often influences her work. Setting up her studio in 1991, she began producing functional and aesthetic assemblages out of the wonderful junk she would find. She and her best friend, Opal Ann, a black & tan hound peruse the neighborhoods in search of treasure. "I know the garbage pick up schedules so the evenings before all the good stuff gets taken away off Opal Ann and I go!" Rusted roofing tin, old wood, porch railings, barn doors, irreparable chairs, bed springs….worn and discarded pieces of other peoples lives became birdhouses, yard art or simply forums for painting. " As our ever-changing society replaces old with new, I find magic on some level by resurrecting small parts of the past and making them new through artistic expression." Salvaging materials that would have ended up in the landfill, she gives character to abandoned objects using her own innate style, rendering them changed but still a part of the living …and not forgotten to all.