The Cornell Art Museum at Old School Square in Delray Beach is using discarded materials as the foundation for a new exhibition that turns e-waste, salvaged pipes, computer keys and other cast-off objects into a pointed cultural argument about consumption, memory and environmental responsibility.

The exhibition, Persistence of Matter: Transforming Discarded Materials into Art that Inspires and Provokes, gathers artists who make work from reclaimed or repurposed materials, asking viewers to reconsider what happens after everyday objects are thrown away. Palm Beach ArtsPaper reported June 28 that the show features works by artists including Mike Silverman, KX2 and Doug Powell, with the exhibition on view at the Cornell Museum of Art at Old School Square in Delray Beach.

The premise is direct: discarded materials do not simply disappear. They remain in landfills, recycling streams, storage rooms, waterways, industrial systems and cultural memory. By putting those materials back into the gallery, the exhibition shifts the conversation from disposal to transformation. It treats waste not as an endpoint, but as evidence of how Americans live, consume, upgrade, replace and forget.

Old School Square’s exhibition materials describe Persistence of Matter as a show about artists who transform the forgotten into the unforgettable through upcycling and environmental awareness. The institution frames the work as a reconsideration of consumption, waste and the environmental impact of everyday materials. The exhibition opened June 5, with Old School Square materials listing the Cornell Art Museum’s upper-level galleries as the venue and curators Mavis Benson and Pam Lambie as the exhibition’s organizers.

Silverman’s work brings the theme into the digital age. The Delray Beach-based artist uses reclaimed hard-drive platters and motherboards to create reflective wall sculptures that explore the intersection of technology, humanity and art. His pieces are especially resonant for a U.S. audience accustomed to rapid device turnover, cloud computing and constant hardware replacement. In the exhibition context, obsolete technology becomes a material record of modern life rather than merely a disposal problem.

Palm Beach ArtsPaper reported that five of Silverman’s sculptures are included, among them works from his Beyond Humanity series. That series uses discarded computer components to imagine a cyborg-like transition from machine to self-awareness. The materials are cold, metallic and industrial, but the forms point toward vulnerability, reflection and human presence. The result is a reversal of the usual e-waste narrative: parts designed for data storage and computation are repurposed into objects that ask viewers to think about identity, memory and the emotional consequences of technological dependence.

The environmental context is difficult to separate from the art. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says used electronics have inherent value when they are reused, refurbished or recycled, and warns that improper disposal can create waste-management problems in the United States or abroad. In Silverman’s hands, discarded electronics are not only recovered materials; they are also symbols of a society that often treats complex devices as temporary conveniences.

KX2, the collaboration between sisters Ruth Avra and Dana Kleinman, approaches the exhibition’s theme through water systems, industrial materials and environmental design. Their practice combines metalwork and painting, with an emphasis on climate, water infrastructure and the natural world. At Cornell, their work places utility pipes, salvaged metal and repurposed surfaces in dialogue with questions about water quality, development and ecological fragility.

One of the duo’s referenced works, Hydra, is built around the idea of hidden infrastructure: the pipes that move clean water, storm drainage and wastewater through modern communities. Such systems are typically invisible until they break down. By turning pipe networks into sculptural language, KX2 makes infrastructure visible and aesthetic without stripping it of urgency. The work asks viewers to see public systems not as background machinery, but as fragile networks tied to environmental health and urban growth.

Their pieces also broaden the exhibition beyond household recycling. The show is not only about bottles, cans or single-use objects. It is about the built environment, technological systems and the industrial materials that support everyday life. In that sense, Persistence of Matter links the intimate act of throwing something away to larger questions about public works, climate stress and the materials embedded in American cities.

Powell’s work focuses on another familiar form of technological obsolescence: the computer keyboard. The Orlando-based artist creates large-scale mosaic images from recycled computer keys, arranging individual keys into portraits and cultural imagery. Palm Beach ArtsPaper reported that his portraits of Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl and Pablo Picasso are included in the exhibition.

Powell’s practice is built on the tension between mass-produced fragments and recognizable images. A keyboard key is small, standardized and utilitarian; in large quantities, those keys become pixels, texture and language. Because the keys still carry letters, numbers and symbols, they also retain traces of communication. The material is obsolete, but it is not mute. It still points to writing, labor, identity and digital culture.

That approach gives the Cornell exhibition an accessible entry point. Visitors may not know the formal vocabulary of contemporary sculpture, but they know what a keyboard is, what a hard drive suggests and what a pipe does. The show’s strength is that it begins with objects people recognize and then changes the terms on which those objects are seen. The transformation is visual, but it is also moral: the discarded object becomes evidence, memory and possibility.

The exhibition also arrives at a moment when cultural institutions are under pressure to prove their civic relevance. Museums and local arts centers are increasingly asked to serve not only as display spaces, but as public forums for education, environmental awareness and community participation. Persistence of Matter fits that model by pairing an accessible material theme with a broader set of questions about sustainability and value.

Old School Square says the exhibition will include related programming such as artist talks, salon discussions, film screenings, installations and community events during the run of the show. That programming matters because the exhibition’s subject is not static. Waste is produced daily, and the practices of reuse, repair and repurposing depend on public habits as much as artistic imagination.

The Cornell Art Museum’s location in South Florida adds another layer. In a region shaped by coastal development, water management, climate risk and tourism-driven consumption, an exhibition about material afterlives has local stakes. KX2’s focus on water infrastructure speaks directly to those concerns, while Silverman and Powell connect the region’s art scene to national conversations about digital waste and technological culture.

Persistence of Matter ultimately argues that discarded materials are not culturally neutral. They carry the history of use, the consequences of design and the habits of the people who abandon them. By converting throwaways into art, the Cornell exhibition does not claim that art alone can solve waste. Instead, it uses art to slow the act of looking and to make visible what daily life often hides.

For viewers, the show’s question is less about whether trash can become beautiful than about why so much value is missed in the first place. The works on view suggest that what is discarded may still hold information, labor, memory and form. In the hands of these artists, waste becomes a material record of American life — and a prompt to reconsider what should be preserved, repaired or reimagined before it is forgotten.