I just recently discovered the sculpture of Tara Donovan. She uses very ordinary materials - toothpicks, plastic cups, plastic straws, fishing line - but whatever she uses, she uses a lot of it. This sculpture, for example, is made from thousands and thousands of plastic cups: Tara Donovan Untitled 2003 Ace Gallery, New York A room-size, cloud-like sculpture made from recycled materials The transformation is amazing - I guess it is partly because of the quantity of the materials she uses, but it is also because she's really tuned in to the way that many single things can combine to suggest a whole (a landscape, a cloud). This would make me interested in making a creature or a diorama with very limited materials - usually my inclination is to combine a wide variety of stuff. There are more images (with details, so you can see what the sculptures are made of) here. I love the "island" made from pencils...