One man's trash is this Bronx man's art

Denis Slattery for New York Daily News

This piece, fashioned from discarded items by Bronx artist Tony Feher, will be on display starting next week at the Bronx Museum of the Arts

This art is truly trashy.

A new retrospective at the Bronx Museum of the Arts will examine the work of a Mott Haven-based sculptor who has become a master of making art out of discarded stuff.

The show, which opens Oct. 6, will include more than 60 pieces that span the evolution of Tony Feher’s 25-year career.

Feher, who has lived on the lower East Side for more than three decades, has become a familiar face since he moved his studio to Mott Haven eight years ago.

The 57-year-old packrat says that making art out of plastic bottles, marbles and mops came naturally to him.

“There’s all this stuff around and I realized that you could take advantage of it and use it as a material for making art,” Feher said. “It’s not that art has to be bronze or has to be some other precious material.”

After discovering his love of creating what he calls “accumulation pieces,” Feher stopped frequenting art supply stores and began gathering objects and jars from supermarkets.

“I just began seeing the possibilities,” the New Mexico-born artist said. “If you just abstract it down and don’t get hung up on what it is, but you see the clarity of the glass and the basic color, you can use that in a way to make a sculpture.”

Feher is always finding new ways to use objects like bottles. He’ll stack them on table-like platforms until the forms come to resemble miniature cityscapes.

The largest sculpture in the exhibit, a massive red cube, is composed of 350 interlocking plastic soda cases, stacked together like legos.

Another piece, titled “Sharadiant,” consists of 19 broom and mop handles connected by a piece of string and spread over the gallery floor in a colorful pattern reminiscent of a ferris wheel.

The exhibition was organized by Claudia Schmuckli of the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston. Feher lived in Corpus Christi, Tex., before he came to New York.

Many of the sculptures date back to the late 1980s, when the artist was diagnosed with HIV and found himself at an unexpected crossroads.

“When I found out I was positive, I said to myself, “Well, you’re gonna be dead in 10 years, so you better get busy.”

Still going strong, Feher said he enjoys seeing his works from the past, but that it’s strange looking back on his work.

“We all leave this slime trail of stuff behind. I just pick mine up,” Feher said.

A survey of the works Tony Feher, Oct. 6 through Feb. 15 at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse, (718) 681-6000 or visit www.bronxmuseum.org for museum hours.

dslattery@nydailynews.com