Art is often about pushing boundaries and exploring new forms of expression. Sometimes, this means artists get incredibly creative—and a little weird—with their materials. While some artists strive for beauty, others focus on innovation and making a statement. Here are ten of the weirdest materials that artists have used to create their masterpieces, ranging from the disgusting to the truly inspired.
1. Blood
Looking for a bold, red hue? Blood might seem like an obvious choice, but it dries to a dark brown. Vincent Castiglia uses human blood exclusively to create nightmarish images. Marc Quinn is known for his ‘Self’ series: sculptures of his head made from his own frozen blood. Each bust requires ten pints of blood, and he creates a new one every five years to show the aging process.
There were rumors that one of Quinn’s busts melted after a freezer malfunction at Charles Saatchi’s home, but these sculptures travel with their own refrigeration. The art’s dependency on refrigeration is part of its meaning: if the freezer breaks, the art melts. Quinn is philosophical about what happens to his work after his death, but one thing is certain: no more Marc means no more blood, making these portraits more valuable.
2. Toast
While some art materials like marble are meant to last forever, others are more temporary. Lennie Payne found artistic inspiration in toast. Payne uses a blowtorch to char the bread and then scrapes away the burnt parts to create images. He makes portraits of famous people to reflect on the fleeting nature of fame. Some of his toast portraits decay even faster than the fame of their subjects.
Payne tries to preserve his art by soaking the toast in resin and varnish. Once, mice nibbled away at several slices of a portrait before he could preserve it. Everyone’s a critic!
3. Fruit
Photography can capture a moment and make it last forever. Stephanie Sarley uses fruit in her videos and photos, sparking both fame and controversy for her sexually suggestive content. Her work challenges societal standards and questions social media rules. Why is a man’s nipple acceptable, but a woman’s is banned? Sarley pushes boundaries by interacting with juicy fruit in provocative ways.
4. Cheese
Many people love cheese, but does melting it all over everything create art? Cosimo Cavalerro thinks so. Inspired by a cheese drip on his chair, Cavalerro has covered sheds, hotel rooms, and dresses in cheese. He photographs these cheesy installations to preserve them. He has also created a controversial chocolate statue of Jesus, but cheese remains his favorite medium.
In 2019, Cavalerro protested the construction of a wall on the Mexican-US border by building his own cheese wall nearby to highlight the absurdity. “It sounds cheesy,” he said, “but just love one another.”
5. Ants
What would you do with 200,000 ants? Most people would call an exterminator, but Chris Trueman used them to create his masterpiece. He ordered ants in batches of up to 40,000, killed them, and then individually positioned them with tweezers to form his image. His finished piece, “Self-Portrait with a Gun,” was put on sale for $35,000.
Trueman killed the ants with nail polish remover, but eventually, he felt bad about it. “It took several years, not because of the actual labor, but because… I started to feel bad about killing all of the ants.” He stopped the project for over a year but decided to finish it to make the initial deaths meaningful. Ripley’s Believe It or Not is believed to have purchased the piece.
6. Fish Heads
We tell kids not to play with their food, but we might be missing out on lucrative art opportunities. Anne-Catherine Becker-Echivard centers her work around playing with food. She uses fish heads to create little scenes, staging them as if they were humans. Her fascination began in childhood when she dressed her pet rats in doll clothes.
Training in the fish industry sparked her love for severed fish heads. Her creations may not be for everyone, but they make you smile and think. According to the artist, “Take the fishes in my factories for an example, they are in uniforms… That is man, the human being, in general… The dehumanization.” Can fish be art? It’s something to mullet over.
7. Pencils
Artists have used pencils for centuries, but modern artists are using them in new ways. Instead of just drawing, they are turning the pencils themselves into art. Some artists create large artworks by attaching pencils together, while others carve miniature masterpieces into the graphite core.
Salavat Fidai uses his steady hands to work on a tiny scale. Using a sharp blade, he carves the soft graphite into replicas of world landmarks, Game of Thrones swords, and astronauts. Viewers need sharp eyes to see these creations, as some are less than 0.5 mm across.
8. Pennies
Abraham Lincoln’s face is one of the most recognizable in the United States, appearing on the 1-cent coin. Richard Schlatter decided to create a large image of Lincoln using pennies. He used over 24,000 pennies to create a portrait 12 feet high and 8 feet across.
Schlatter was inspired by the varying colors of pennies, from bright copper to nearly black, based on how they are handled. Each year Lincoln has been on the penny, from 1909 to 2017, was represented by at least one coin. With an outlay of about $245 in pennies, Schlatter won an art prize of $200,000.
9. Copper Sulfate
In 2006, Roger Hiorns used high school chemistry to create remarkable art. Many students know copper sulfate from experiments where blue crystals grow in a saturated solution. Hiorns applied this to a BMW engine, transforming the metal into a glittering mass of deep blue crystals.
This wasn’t enough for Hiorns, however. For his next work, he flooded an entire British apartment with 90,000 liters of copper sulfate solution. After a month, the mixture was pumped out, revealing a home transformed into a cavernous blue geode. Donating the artwork to charity required cutting the apartment from its building without damaging the art or neighboring homes.
10. Poop
Many people have strong feelings about Facebook’s effect on society, but few express it through poop. KATSU, a graffiti artist, created a likeness of Mark Zuckerberg using his own feces.
KATSU uses gloves and a face mask when painting with his poop, but the medium perfectly captures his feelings towards his subject. “Mark is Mark,” KATSU said. “He’s this mutation, this gross aspiration everyone idolizes… He deserves to be ridiculed… I want to let people know my beliefs.” KATSU’s series of poop portraits of Silicon Valley titans make his beliefs clear, if not always pretty.
From blood and toast to pennies and poop, these artists show that anything can be a medium for art. They challenge our perceptions and push the boundaries of creativity, often with shocking and thought-provoking results.
What do you think about these unusual art materials? Which one surprised you the most? Leave your comment below!
