Patrick Sells and Casey Tyrrell see beauty in York’s industrial heritage. They scour scrap yards for pieces of  industrial machinery and material to salvage and repurpose as functional sculpture.

Their company, Salvaging Creativity, has made pieces that can be found in homes, businesses, and most recently, downtown York.

New trashcans, benches, bike racks and planters, created from salvaged pieces of York industries can be found on the first block of North Beaver Street in downtown York.

Of their work, Patrick states, “In salvaging and transforming these materials, I hope, beyond artistic concerns, to provide points of recognition for people to appreciate the knowledge and skill resident in York industry.  Even in relative decline, industry in York still thrives.  To show this is my purpose in building from local industrial materials.”

“Beyond improving street aesthetics, we are collecting stories to showcase York’s roots in the Industrial Arts and Design.  This is the type of story and interaction that rekindles identity, interest and connection between people, industry and place, a story that in today’s global economy, many cities must fabricate,” he says.

One of the pieces in downtown York, a planter on the corner of West Philadelphia and North Beaver Street, includes a compressor scroll made by Johnson Controls, a York company located on Richland Avenue. 

Even after its transformation, the machinists and operators at Johnson Controls recognized it in a recent newspaper article. 

Duke Holliway, Operations Manager at Johnston Controls explained the piece’s history, “The base [of the planter]…is what we refer to here at the plant as a compressor scroll.  It is a cast piece that we machine and serves as one of the major components of the compressors we build. This piece was most likely rejected from manufacturing due to porosity in the casting or some dimensional abnormality that precluded our usage. Nevertheless, we are thrilled that through your [Patrick’s] artistic skills, you could breathe new life into our scrap and that it has found a prominent new home in downtown York.”

For more information on Salvaging Creativity, visit www.salvagingcreativity.com.