INCREASINGLY, our world is being consumed by junk. Incessant manufacture of new materials adds mountains of detritus to the landscape.

   At least some artists are putting waste to good use. Assemblage has become the hottest new medium, relying on cast-offs churned out by a disposable society. Old’s Cool, on view at Artworks in Trenton through Dec. 27, showcases some of the best assemblage artists working in central New Jersey.

   The word assemblage was first applied to art in the mid-19th century. Assemblages reuse old, often rusted, industrial materials. The form had its origins in Marcel Duchamp’s concept of the “readymade,” or “found art.” For Duchamp, the spectator — bringing his or her observations — plays just as much a part in the creative process as the artist.

   When Europe was feeling the effects of the stock market crash in 1931, Joan Miro began making small constructions from found materials. Cast-off items helped artists make “new art forms out of the remains of a former culture,” said 20th-century assemblage artist Kurt Schwitters, as quoted in the Art of Appropriation exhibit, just ended at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

   Robert Rauschenberg picked up refuse from the streets of New York and brought it into his studio to make “combines” — three-dimensional work combining painting, sculpture, photography and print and papermaking. Louise Nevelson created her sculpture from found objects. Joseph Cornell made his intriguing boxes with enigmatic ephemera, and Man Ray, Pablo Picasso and Jean Dubuffet all gave new life to found materials.

In Old’s Cool, curator Glenn Moore defines assemblage as a three-dimensional collection of materials, though it may also include new materials. But he wants to set the record straight from the beginning: Not only is he an outsider artist, he is an “outsider curator.”

   When Artworks board member Anne LaBate asked him to curate an exhibit on assemblages, he had to Google what a curator was supposed to do. “It’s usually a person who has a background in art or who studied art,” says Mr. Moore, who only became an artist in 2006. Long ago, while a student at The College of New Jersey, he helped out in the art gallery, but as soon as they found out he was a chemistry major, he was given the boot.

   ”Two years ago I got prostate cancer,” he says. “They zapped it, but it changed my life.” Since then, he has twice taken the plunge to swim with the Polar Bear Club at Coney Island on New Year’s Day. “My rule from now on is, I do what I want.”

   He says he did the swim “cold” — that is, with no training. To avoid being labeled a “chicken dipper” (one who doesn’t go completely under), he had someone film him completely submerged. When the cameraman missed the shot, Mr. Moore reprised the act. “Even with global warming, it’s still pretty cold,” he admits.

   Before Mr. Moore became an artist, and before his cancer, he was a systems engineer for Educational Testing Service. “I burned out,” says the Hamilton resident, who teaches at Stuart Country Day School Summer Camp in Princeton and at the Trenton After School Program, among other places. “I was tired of being in a box. It’s an inside job — you don’t get outside. I was in a cave with a machine.”

   Interestingly, his assemblage works are often boxes, or containers.

   While undergoing radiation for his cancer, Mr. Moore started to make art. “I had time, and (the treatments were) grueling,” he says. “Art is a real release. People liked my stuff so I put it in shows.” Shows such as the highly selective Ellarslie Open at the Trenton City Museum, where two out of three of his works were accepted.

   In Old’s Cool, Mr. Moore is exhibiting “The Alchemist’s Eye,” a box containing his thoughts on what’s inside an alchemist’s mind “if I could climb inside,” he says. There is a brick fireplace (“alchemists are always burning something”), a distilling tube, microscope, dropper bottles, a little jar of yellow stuff, an early list of alchemist’s elements and crystals he grew himself from Epsom salts. He even made a little wooden bench and a tile floor out of clay. He painted a rock to look like an eye, and put tubes at the top of the box to represent blood vessels.

   ”Alchemists thought everything was made from the four elements,” says Mr. Moore. “They were trying to figure out the right combination to make gold.”

   ”Take Your Chance” offers Mr. Moore’s commentary on gambling. For this box there is a skull decoupaged on the back, and a skeleton on the side, to represent the bleak outlook. He made tiny little dice, painted on all six sides, and cut-up credit cards and coins add to the imagery. A tiny Guatemalan worry doll is yelling at her husband, who presumably gambled away their life savings.

   To complete the picture, he created a slot in the box to suggest a slot machine, and wheels with numbers are inside. “I like doors and windows,” he says.

   Found objects often suggest the work. For “Painless,” an homage to his dentist, Mr. Moore found a whole tooth with a gold filling in a coin return. The piece of wavy glass that makes up the door had fallen and cracked in a straight line that fit the opening.

   Round about the time he transformed into an artist, Mr. Moore knew he needed to learn welding and so taught himself in May, with some tips from artist Joan Needham, whose work is in this exhibit as well.

   ”Best Friend” combines both his box work and his welding and takes a life of its own. “It’s not a dog, but sort of a dog — it has a dog’s legs,” he says. Inside the body/box are air conditioner parts, salvaged from Ms. LaBate’s house (“It was flaking out and she asked me to take a look at it; I was going to give it to the scrap man but decided to keep it”), that he reassembled. The box itself was made from a station wagon door.

   Don’t leave your car keys with this man — Mr. Moore scavenges metal wherever he can. For five summers, he has served on mission trips with Nassau Presbyterian Church to Guatemala. Working at a school and setting up the computer room, Mr. Moore says he fell in love with the people. “They are so friendly and nice. Everyone says hello, whether they know you or not. Here, they call the police.”

In addition to the people, he fell in love with metal that can’t be found here. He found a 20-foot metal piece with a ridge he liked, cut it in pieces and brought it home in two 30-pound suitcases.

   Mr. Moore made his welding table out of Ms. LaBate’s old bed frame. From a propane tank at Twin Pines Airport on the Hopewell-Lawrence border, Mr. Moore made “King Tiki,” a giant tiki lantern with big Chicklet teeth, inspired by Peruvian statues.

   For his own commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast, Mr. Moore brought :King Tiki” to Grovers Mill Park in West Windsor and lit it up, watching as flames and smoke shot out King Tiki’s eyes. Mr. Moore thinks big.

   There’s also “Baby Tiki,” made from Ms. LaBate’s sewer pipe. These are cleverly designed with aeration holes to help ventilate the flames. “I like welding because it gives me permission to burn things,” he says.

   Mr. Moore would like to organize a house tour of assemblage artists. Outed as a garbage picker, he says it’s hard to pass things by because he may need to use it someday. “A neighbor replaced a car radiator, so I grabbed it out of the garbage and washed it off,” says Mr. Moore, squatting next to the find he’s brought to the gallery. “How do you pass something like that? There’s copper and brass — even if I just used those pieces...”

   For the Old’s Cool sign, Mr. Moore flattened a 55-gallon steel drum that had been filled with acetone at a print shop (nearly blowing himself up in the process). “I wanted something old, with the ‘38 Buick look,” he says. He sprayed it black, then set it on fire while the paint was still wet, later sanding it down. He sanded out the spaces where he wanted the letters and melted brass to form the outline of the letters. “It looks like it could be 50 years old, but I made it last week.”

   Whether people collect first and start making art, or collect to make their art, it’s all about collecting, says Mr. Moore. The other collector/assemblage artists in the show are: Lisa Bagwell, Ricardo Coke, Eugene Dombroski, John Fellenberg, D.J. Haslett, Joan B. Needham, Marsha Newman, Michelle Post, Cindy Ridolfino, Sarah Stengle, Michael Wiley and Jerry D. Warren. To find these artists, Mr. Moore scoured Art All Night and Gallery 125 in Trenton.

   Not only do the artists here have a passion for collecting, but an obsession for working with tiny little objects, such as Ms. Ridolfino, who carves tiny little cherubic dolls, or Ms. Bagwell, who assembles dozens of veterinary medicine bottles on handmade wires for “Vile Mobile.”

   ”Most artists in here couldn’t do this without being obsessed,” says Mr. Moore.

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