San Francisco Blog

This Thursday SF Weekly will be hosting Artopia, an art show at Project One featuring the 10 finalists in our annual Masterminds contest. That night, we'll award $2,500 grants to three lucky artists. In the meantime, we'll be previewing the works of the works of the finalists here on All Shook Down.

Many of us in the Bay Area have used Craigslist to find cheap furniture. In the spirit of creative reuse, designer Peter Raphael Russo went a step further, obtaining junk from the "Free Stuff" section of Craigslist and turning that junk into functional but mind-bending chairs and furniture. One wood-framed chair features a quilt of woven old ties used to make the C-shaped seat. His masterpiece, though, is a sofa that uses sod grass instead of seat cushions and back rests.

"My furniture is modern, with somewhat of a mid-century influence," he says. "I strive for all of my work (both furniture and nonfurniture alike) to be serious but not stuffy, with an eye for detail."

Russo didn't say how often someone would need to mow the sofa.