I visited the Museum of Arts & Design (MAD) today and loved the current exhibition, Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary. This long-running exhibition, on view through April 19, 2009, takes everyday objects like cutlery, coins, grooming products, books and personal accessories and transforms them into sculptures which delight and amaze their audiences. Some of the works are composite pictures, if you will, an overall image which, when examined closely, is actually a clever arrangement of small objects such as hair combs, spools of thread or apparel labels. Other works are more sculptures than pictures, such as Johnny Swing’s recliner seemingly made of quarters or Tara Donovan’s Bluffs, stalagmite-like towers made of clear buttons glued together into a formation of peaks. Other pieces of note are Jill Townsley’s spoon tower, Donald Lipski’s Spilt Milk, a circus wheel-like sculpture with white, substance-filled bottles on the ends, Yuken Teruya’s shopping bags and Paul Villinki’s record collection/butterfly sculpture. There is a lot of fun to be had, and it is actually one of the few exhibitions I enjoy seeing with a crowd as it is such fun of listening to other visitors exclaim about a piece they have just seen or grab their companions by the sleeve to point out something new they have discovered.

The Museum of Arts & Design, 2 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10019