From the junk drawer to the trash bin, the raw materials for this artist are the objects of everyday life.

Once in awhile you come across an artist whose work just floors you. It's not only beautiful to look at, but when you imagine the skill and time that goes into each piece, your appreciation for the artist just jumps sky-high. And so it is for me with the work of Zac Freeman and his 'assemblage' artworks.

"I started making assemblage artworks of this type in 1999. The artworks are made entirely out of collected junk, found objects, and general trash. I glue the bits of junk to a wooden substrate to form an image, usually faces, which only can be seen at a distance."

Each one perfectly captures an expression on the subject's face, and the subtle shading and colors used in them seem like just another artist's way of expression, which isn't too amazing, as far as works of art go, until you look closely.

The portraits are three-dimensional, made up from bits and pieces, odds and ends, the stuff of everyday life, put together so cunningly as to appear as if a painting from a distance away. In fact, the closer you look at each work, the less they resemble their subject and the more they resemble a miniature landscape.

Legos, Altoids tins, remote controls, film cans, buttons, gears, knobs, lids, telephones, toy train tracks. These are the 'brushes' used to paint these amazing portraits. Nothing is actually painted to create these, so each piece is chosen not only for its shape, but for its hue.

"It is very important to me that I incorporate the actual objects into the art as opposed to a picture or rendition of it because it better expresses the intention of the artwork. I feel the junk is more powerful being present. It is an actual thing to be reckoned with that existed in this time and place and carries energy in and of itself."

One of the other reasons I liked these works so much is that they remind me of some the books my kids read, where each page is a different miniature scene of daily life made with found objects resembling a real life counterpart.

We would spend hours identifying the things that were used for other purposes in the scenes, trying to figure out where they came from originally, and Freeman's work urges me to do the same thing - to not only appreciate the view from a distance, but to get close up and see all of the pieces with which it's made.

These portraits also remind me of time capsules, in which the zeitgeist is captured with all of these tiny everyday things, and the end result reflecting our culture back to us.

Check out Zac Freeman's site, and maybe get inspired by his art and start making masterpieces from your own junk drawer!