Artist John Carleton Photography by Brandon Sullivan

“Oh, my gosh, that looks like my old turkey roaster.”

“Hey, those are my swim fins!”

“Could that possibly be . . . a bedpan?”

Such comments are sparked by the artwork of John Carleton, a craftsman whose creations often defy classification. Mixed media might be the correct technical term, if car grilles, dials and gauges, silver trays, ice buckets, Chinese checkers boards and hubcaps can be considered  “media.”

Whatever his art form is called, Carleton’s works inspire a new way of viewing the outdated and overlooked—commonplace bits and pieces he recycles into whimsical faces with delightful lifelike expressions.

Carleton’s faces spring to life in a studio at his Scottsdale home and at his larger studio in Cave Creek, Arizona, which he describes as being as much a warehouse as it is an atelier. Narrow pathways snake through piles of components waiting to respond to Carleton’s touch. A shiny ladle may have a future as a nose, a half-circle drawer pull’s destiny could be a smile. He says he works on the floor, but if the pieces were just lying there, they would draw little attention. “If you rearrange them just a little bit, the objects come quite alive and interesting,” he declares.

An old roasting pan (left) has knob eyes and a car-ornament mouth, while a bedpan has toy-wheel eyes and a juice squeezer for the nose and mouth.

To showcase his work, the artist recently opened his own gallery in Sedona. This past spring, his pieces were on exhibit in a show titled “Faces” at es Posible Gallery in Scottsdale. Es Posible owner June Gilliam says of Carleton: “He has a wonderful way of seeing the world. He can find even a single object and see it as a nose, or mouth or eye.”

The artist’s attitude toward “found” materials is in sync with the environmental movement’s thrust to reuse existing objects. “My art is an attempt to find and show the beautiful, perhaps the perfect, in the discarded, the broken, the forgotten, the obsolete,” he observes. Viewers often recognize parts of their own history and experience a sense of nostalgia, especially when seeing roasting pans, which may stir memories of family holidays. There is an immediate emotional connection, he says.

Garage sales, junkyards, secondhand shops and eBay are among the artist’s favorite sources for finding materials. “There’s something about something having been used,” he comments as he points out a round, smooth griddle. “There’s a history here—30 years of making pancakes.” Although labels come immediately to mind when viewing Carleton’s works, he does not title them, noting, “I think you prejudice the piece when you title it. So I leave it open to the viewer.”