Joseph Delappe
Alberty University

Thrift Drones, 2016-ongoing
Found imagery, montage, social exchange

Purchased thrift store artworks are changed with the subtle addition of cut out images of Predator and Reaper drones. The work reimagines discarded, everyday paintings, prints and photographs as visual reminders of droned skies. These works have been widely shared using social media, primarily Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. To date I’ve made well over a 200 “Thrift Drones”– the first iteration of these works were featured salon style in 2017 at solo-exhibition at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. There were a total of 120 "Thrift Drones" featured in this exhibition. Since moving to Scotland in 2017, I've continued this work, developing a UK based version of the project creating close to 100 new pieces so far (there were just too many amazing second hand shops here to stop doing this project...).

As the project moves forward, the intent is to strategically re-donate the droned artworks back to thrift stores in order to facilitate the public re-distribution of the works. I see this as a long term effort to place drones into the skies of hundreds of pieces of thrift store art, document, share, exhibit, donate and so on. I am presently developing a framework for distributing these works to thrift stores and second hand shops throughout the United States and United Kingdom.