Greening Austin Daily

Spotlight on Local Businesses: Austin Artist Tony Romano

1st September, 2010 - Posted by katherine - No Comments

A friend of a friend recently introduced me to the work of Austin artist Tony Romano, and I have loved looking through his flickr gallery.  Tony started making furniture out of found objects (often things collected from bulk trash day) in the early 90′s, and with his talent for transforming other people’s trash into useful, cool pieces, he soon was selling his pieces to local shops like Uncommon Objects and Yard Dog.  By the mid-90′s he was successful enough that he was able to work full time at his new business.  Tony continues today to make custom pieces for clients using found objects, and  mostly does commissioned pieces now, ranging in price from $150-850.  He’s also started to do more decorative construction work (for example, he’s done a lot of the interior of the Home Slice on South Congress.)  I had a hard time picking some pictures of my favorite pieces, but here are a few:  

 I love the finish on this one  

  

 cute bathroom cabinet 

  

 a concrete table 

  

  

 This is a mirror Tony made out of the back of an antique chair (!) 

  

  

  

wine rack 

  

  

  

coffee table 

  

  

 My fav! A table made of an old gym floor. Fun!

 

  

  

 Tony has also made several cool picture frames out of old doors – you can see the door jam or hinge on several of them.

 

  

  

 

You can also see several paintings by Tony on his flickr page. He picks up extra paint from Home Depot that they would otherwise through out for his projects, and also uses discarded objects for his canvases. 

  

  

 

a picture of the floors he did in Homeslice

   

 

And just for fun, here’s a guitar Tony decorated for a charity – it was auctioned off for $5,000 which all went to the SIMS Foundation. More pictures of that here.

 

 If you are interested in his work, you can email him here or find him on facebook.