Welcome to the World of Found Art!

If you're visiting this site, you have probably just found a piece of Found Art. I hope that it has brightened your day. Please leave a comment and let me know where you found your piece of art. The Found Art idea is spreading around the world. Why not make your own art and spread the joy? There is an artist hiding in every one of us.

Found Art! (found-art.com) was born a year ago, the result of artist Sharon Vogt's desire "to do something positive" after Sept. 11 — or, at the very least, make someone somewhere smile.

"Creativity and art is very healing and uplifting," says Vogt, of Madison, Wis., whose day job is writing math textbooks. "I wasn't finding a place in the political realm to change the world, and I wanted to be for something rather than against."

Vogt, 40, is for spreading art around, so that's just what the 1,000 artists and crafters around the world who have joined the project are trying to do. They make small artworks — sculpted figures, booklets of drawings, decorated mailing labels, collaged postcards and CDs, sidewalk chalk drawings, even "fairy houses" made by kids and tied to trees — and "release them into the wild." They leave them at public places such as park benches, library shelves, hospital waiting rooms, grocery bulletin boards and malls.

Those who find the artworks can keep them, throw them away or leave them someplace else. And they can go to the Found Art! site to leave comments about what they found and how it made them feel.

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