This project is a practice-based exploration of how a work of art emerges from within a field of signs that are givens brought to the art-making process. In particular it explores the use of utilitarian objects as sculptural materials, where the given signs relate mostly to their past utility. The art-making process then involves a clearing of such givens so that new modes of signification can emerge, as sculptural works of art. Here, the process of making is simultaneously the process of clearing. Various strategies for using these materials are explored, including means to rupture or attenuate associations that objects hold (that we hold for them) with the past. Consideration is given to how, through such means, fresh possibilities might emerge from any material used in the work of art.