When Sherman Rouse says that his art is a bunch of junk he is not offering up an artistic critique. His sculptures are literally made from a bunch of junk. Rouse makes art out of recycled metal objects. He has taken the phrase “one man's trash is another man's treasure” to the extreme. His favorite places to shop for art supplies are old farmsteads and metal salvage yards.

It can take hundreds of parts and days of labor to assemble his work, says Sherman Rouse.

“It's criminal what people throw away,” said Rouse from his comfy home outside Rio Rico. “Can't they see the beauty in that piece of scrap metal?”

Rouse's eyes take on an almost elfish twinkle as he talks about the metal characters racing bicycles, shaking marimbas, dancing, galloping on a horse and ominously guarding the living room. Most of them look pretty friendly. A few are a little scary, looking as if they stepped out of his favorite Mad Max movies where just about everything was made from recycled metal parts. Each figure has its own personality and name.

Like most other sculptors who build things out of recycled metal, Rouse stared making yard art as a hobby. He learned to weld at a high school night class before he retired from teaching elementary school for 30 years in White Salmon, Wash. It was fun searching through farmers’ “boneyards” of discarded farm implements, he said. Several years ago a light went off and he figured out a way to add non-ferrous objects such as brass doorknobs, silver spoons, copper teapots and aluminum hinges, which can’tt be welded to steel, to his characters. That took his art to a whole new level, he said.

“Most of the Washington yard art was big and cranky and I sold it pretty cheap,” said Rouse. “It has all sort of evolved since then. I started adding pieces that gave it bling. Now I consider it fine art”

That “bling” comes in the form of just about anything that catches Rouse's eye. He still loves poking around old farmsteads and knows every salvage yard within 100 mile of home. He admits he is like a raven that loves to find shiny things and brings them home. “I find things everywhere,” he said. “I'm a runner and I'm always picking up something when I go out. When I find something on the road it's a good day.”

Rouse will spend hours stripping rust and grime from his found treasures with steel brushes before they are assembled. Figuring out how to use the pieces in a sculpture comes strictly from his imagination. Each sculpture usually begins with a rebar steel skeleton welded with his “trusty Lincoln Buzz box stick welder.”

It can take several days to pick out all the pieces needed for one sculpture and several more to weld and bolt it all together, he said. Most of his finished sculptures are purchased to go indoors or live in areas protected from the elements. Some buyers put their characters outdoors and let them rust and return to their natural metal patina colors, he said

“The key to it all is finding the right pieces that work together,” explained Rouse from his 14-foot-by-20-foot shop, made from recycled materials, of course. “If I use a hundred pieces in a sculpture I go through 500 before I pick them. Somewhere between that box and that box and this table is a motorcycle. I've just got to find it.”

Outside the shop, rows of future metal arms, legs, hair and clothing lay neatly along the hillside. A few special pieces of “bling” are wired to the branches of mesquite trees. A discarded trumpet sits next to old tractor parts of unknown origin.

In the next pile a cast-iron drain piece, a set of kitchen faucets and a sprinkler head share the hillside with springs and parts from hay balers. Rouse surveys his scrap pile with the look of a miner who has uncovered a vein of pure gold. “Look at this piece. It's really sweet,” he grins. “And it's all junk!”

Inspiration for a new piece can come by looking at a part and seeing a helmet, or by having a character in mind, said Rouse. The idea for the pole lamp in the living room came to him when he found a five-gallon natural gas container riddled with bullet holes from a hunter's target practice at a hunting camp, he said. With a little iron chain lace, a sprinkler head finial and a lizard crawling up the side the container became the lamp's shade.

“You can't teach someone to have an eye like that,” said Rouse's wife Charlotte, an aspiring oil painter. Their home, she said, is dotted with her husband's recycling projects. He made the outdoor patio out of recycled broken concrete pieces, the kiva fireplace incorporated an old tuba in the chimney and all sorts of found bobbles hang like Christmas ornaments from the trees. “He saves us a lot of money. Art is in everything he does.”

Rouse's biggest sculpture to date is a six-foot-tall soldier that guards the home of a White Salmon judge. He recently completed a series of kachina dancers, modeled after Native American kachinas. He said his college classes as an art major, physical education minor taught him anatomy and how muscles work and making his lizards, roadrunners, dogs, motorcycle riders and dancing figures come to life and breath comes easy for him.

His trademark addition to each character is a dangling earring and he loves to add layer upon layer of flowing hair to the characters. “I'm a wannabe beautician,” he said smiling. “I don't have any hair so my guys gotta have lots of hair.”

At first glance most people just see the figure, but once they look harder they too begin to smile, Rouse said. Old-timers get a big kick out of identifying all the parts he has married together and smiles come freely as they name off an air conditioner cooling system, a spring tooth harrow, ditcher teeth, wood stove legs, an old Chevy bumper and a 'thing-a-ma-jig' off a car brake. It's the smiles that are his biggest compliments, he said.

“When you have them on the table it is kind of like being a doctor,” said Rouse. At some point you wonder if you can save them and then, a couple hours later, they are breathing and they have become your friends.”

Rouse and his painter wife, Charlotte, will be featured at a show opening on Saturday, April 4, at the Hilltop Gallery in Nogales. Each year he does several arts and crafts fairs to show them. When not making his wacky friends he makes iron gates and furniture and “just about anything people ask me to make”, he said. He recently submitted work for publication in a book that will feature artists who make art from recycled objects.

“My favorite piece is the next one,” said Rouse. There's always someone new hiding in the pile.”