Discarded shoes, a snorkel, or a skateboard deck lying on the street might seem like useless bits of trash. But Vancouver painter Joel Libin has found a place for items like these in his art. An exhibit of Libin’s mixed-media acrylic paintings and sculpture, satirically titled Vancouver: Keep it Spectacular!, runs at the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery [950 West 41st Avenue, Vancouver] until July 17.

The Straight reached Libin by phone to talk about the exhibit.

How did you incorporate the found objects into your works?

Usually I will just stretch the canvass onto the frames and paint it on with gesso or white primer and at that point I’ll place the objects randomly onto the canvass and attach them or adhere them with medium, usually like a gloss medium”¦. They’re placed on there randomly and then sometimes I would go to life drawing classes and I would paint the human figure onto the canvass or I would just paint from my imagination and then I would allow those objects to obscure, kind of like, the reading of the painting.

Where did you find these objects?

En route to my studio”¦is really where I found them”¦. I just collect these things and think that they would look really good in some sort of composition.

What interests you about the found objects?

I think it just really grew from the fact that I wanted to be more physical with my painting process”¦. It’s a lot exploration and wanting to play around and challenge the idea of like the perfect, flat image.

Portrait of An Artist is a new feature on Straight.com that profiles local visual artists. Suggest an artist to profile in the comments section below or by sending a message via Twitter to twitter.com/thomsonstraight.