DENIZEN OF THE SCRAP YARD  My brother, Mark Hundley, took this portrait of me at Bobby Chenman's scrap yard in Norfolk, Va in 2014. Before he sold the business in 2017, I loved roaming the yard there, letting my mind wander. I was able to hallucinate drug-free, completely absorbed in the moment, seeing all the wonderful things around me – not for what they were, but for what they might become!

WHRO AND THE SCENE PRESENT "Sam Hundley, An American Scrap Artist" In 2016, Hyunsoo Leo Kim, a very talented photojournalist and longtime friend at The Virginian-Pilot, created THIS 6-MINUTE VIDEO PROFILE of me for the local public television station. I was the first in a series of video portraits of local artists. This will help explain what I do.

BIO: I was born in Phoenix on Sept. 26, 1958, and was inspired from a very young age to be an artist by my parents, who enjoyed creating folk art – seasonal decorations, quilts, puppets, masks – out of everyday household items. I learned to improvise.

While studying commercial art at the University of Arizona in Tucson, I landed a part-time job at The Arizona Daily Star, which launched a career spanning 39 years and 5 newspapers across the country. I caught the wave of newspaper design at its ascendancy and thrived as an artist in that intoxicating hive where everyone pitched in to communicate ideas clearly, creatively and quickly. And the decades flew by because it was fun.

I met Lynndale Pierce in Seattle, married Jan. 19, 1986, in Norfolk, VA and raised two daughters, Lucy and Claire.

I began collecting found objects (metal debris, road gloves, flattened cans, etc.) in 1990 while working in San Jose, CA and in Oct. 2009, back in Virginia, I began devoting myself to creating art using these things. It was like a faucet being turned on full blast. My first solo exhibition was in 2012 and I’ve shown my work at local galleries several times since. I also began leading workshops to share my philosophy of seeing and utilizing the beauty that surrounds us.

Since my retirement from The Virginian-Pilot in Dec. 2017, I spend most of my time in my home studio, where I illustrated and designed the 2019 Meat Puppets album, “Dusty Notes” (2018), designed an e-book for kids, “Scrap Art Alphabet” (2018) and created my first children’s book, “Gifts of the Magpie,” to be released March 1, 2021.