What is art? John Hudson meets Sarah-Jane van der Westhuizen, who creates works of art from the things we throw away

W hen it comes to jokes about producing "rubbish art", Sarah-Jane van der Westhuizen has heard them all. In fact, bearing in mind her quirky sense of humour, she has probably made up quite a few throwaway remarks herself.

She's a Womble of sorts, making good use of the things that she finds, things that the everyday folks leave behind, and turning them into something new.

In fact, she'll even tell you that she's at the sharp end of the great recycling boom, with almost nothing dismissed as unsuitable for use.

And by the time an amalgamation of old junk has been sprayed in bronze or silver paint, you'd be amazed at how easy on the eye it can be.

Easy or challenging, one of the two.

Whatever, it finds its way into arty shops and galleries – and for some people, that's the only definition of art that counts.

She finds her raw materials everywhere – but always with permission, she hastens to add.

"In London years ago, I furnished three flats with what I found in street skips," she says, "but I don't do that anymore.

"Friends see rubbish and think of me, charity shops throw what they can't use in my direction and I visit all the IT repair skips and town tips.

"They know me well at the local tip, so I don't have to jump into the skips to rummage.

"The lady who mends clothes at Timpson's keeps me stocked up with buttons, clips and zips.

"I'll use anything: bottles, bottle tops, mobile phone cases, tins, boxes, bits of machinery, old boots, broken tools, broken all sorts."

For smaller works, such as picture frames, she has a special liking for the cogs and springs of clocks and watches. The names she gives her creations are almost always a play on words: Junk Male, Rubbish Bin, Wreck Chair, Shoe Tree, Rubbish On TV.

Sarah-Jane started thinking along these lines some 20 years ago when she and her family seemed to be moving house so often that she was forever clearing out the backs of kitchen drawers, with their treasure trove of lost spoons, coins, pencils, toffees, toys out of crackers and so on.

In the end, she'd accumulated enough to stick on, and in, a picture frame, with a little mirror in the middle, and when she took it along to craft fairs, adults – always adults – couldn't keep their hands off it.

The first many of us saw of her work was at the King Bladud's Pigs street art venture in Bath last year, when her Pigasus stood out as almost the only plastic porker with objects applied to it. Most of them retained their sleek shape, but hers stood out like a rugged old wild boar.

As befitted an extremely distant relative of the flying horse Pegasus, Sarah-Jane's Pigasus came complete with wings made of car windscreen wipers. This was particularly apt since the sponsors for her creation, which stood on a roof in Wood Street, was the Flying Pig renovation company. But now S-J, as she is known to her friends, is assailing us on all sides. She is currently working hard at her studio on the Lydart Ridge, above Llandogo in the Wye Valley, for her biggest exhibition to date at the third Bristol Design Festival in June.

And to prepare us for that, we can currently enjoy her work at three Bristol venues: Mark Elliot's shop at the Triangle in Clifton, the Nails Gallery in the Lower Exchange beside St Nicholas Market, and in the foyer of the studios at 35 King Street.

A widow with five grown-up children, she sees her main source of income as running a B&B, although anything could happen if, like Pigasus, her jaunty junk takes flight.

Happily, her boarding house, with its panoramic views, is popular with both summer tourists and year-round business people, who see it as a hidden gem on the back road between Chepstow and Monmouth.

She's a great cook, the scenery's spectacular, and you never hear her guests rubbishing the place, that's for sure.