Ruby Silvious has spent years proving that even the most ordinary materials can become something worth looking at twice. For the New York-based artist, that has often meant turning something most people would simply throw away- a used tea bag- into a miniature canvas for detailed paintings and unexpected compositions. Bored Panda has featured Silvious’ work several times over the years, and her more recent pieces continue to explore just how much can fit onto these tiny, imperfect surfaces. Landscapes, flowers, animals, people, everyday objects, and even playing cards appear across stained and wrinkled tea bags, sometimes contained within a single piece and other times spread across several bags to form one larger image. The folds, torn edges, seams, and natural discoloration of the material are not hidden away; instead, they become part of the finished artwork.
Silvious first gained widespread attention with her “363 Days of Tea” project, during which she created a new work on an emptied tea bag for 363 consecutive days. Since then, her experiments have expanded far beyond tea, with eggshells, leaves, wine corks, vintage envelopes, paper bags, and receipts all becoming unconventional surfaces for painting and collage. Her tea bag paintings, however, remain especially connected to her travels, often functioning like tiny visual memories of places, objects, and moments encountered along the way. Through these miniature works, Silvious encourages viewers to reconsider what an artwork, or an art material, can be.
Scroll down to see some of her more recent tea bag creations, and let us know which piece caught your eye the most.
