Book Review: Monumental: The Reimagined World of Kevin O'Callaghan

Making this from a cast-off that

It's not often that you'll come across a book that can be opened at any page and be grabbed by what you see. These pages are crammed with student work inspired by Kevin O'Callaghan who teaches 3-D design at New York's School of Visual Arts. His course seems to be a think-outside-the-box approach to design where he gives students cast-off anything and they have to create something new. The results are really quite amazing.

The 120 assault rifles featured in the chapter called 'Disarm' were given to sixty-five students and they came up with, for example: a tricycle; kitchen blender; casual table; baby buggy; teddy bear; violin. Forty students given seventy-five obsolete typewriters in 'The next best...Ding!' created a waffle iron; vacuum cleaner; hot-air hand dryer; miniature ice hockey rink; plate cup and place setting for one and a bubble gum machine amongst other items. All these become more intriguing because there is a time element, both these exercises had to be completed in three weeks.

The book kicks off with probably O'Callaghan's most ambitious and famous exercise: what thirty-two students could do with thirty-nine out-of-time Yugo cars. Twenty-one are featured, mostly still as cars but turned into something else. Perhaps the most flamboyant is James Korpai's New York subway car (pages thirty-six and seven) and has to be seen to be believed.

The book is nicely produced with a few hundred color photos and fortunately presented in a straightforward way because the images are interesting enough without the need for flashy page graphics and as I said earlier you can look at any page and be grabbed by what you'll see.

Monumental: The Reimagined World of Kevin O'Callaghan is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

Subway train and close-up made from a Yugo car.

Ice hockey from an old typrwriter.

Most of the chapters open like this listing the items used and the number of artists. The little graphics across the middle indicate the chapters in the book.

Practical things to do with guns.

Right: one use for a section of an engine's transmission.

Uses for gas-guzzler parts.

Sculpture to promote a new Toyota range.

The first illustrated section in the book has a whole load of Yugos (39) converted to different uses by O'Callaghan's students.

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