You can hardly miss the vibrant yellow building, Mo Shop, if you drive from Nawarat Bridge in Chiang Mai to go toward Thapae Road. The shop, locating between two old buildings, is an art shop and a studio.

Taiwijit Puengkasemsomboon, a former lecturer of Fine Arts Faculty, Chiang Mai University, has taken care of interior decoration of Mo Shop: functional objects. With more than 20 years of experiences in paintings and sculture, Taiwiji is fascinated with transforming discarded materials into 'new' functional objects.

Taiwijit Puengkasemsomboon, an artist who decorates Mo Shop in Chiang Mai.

Plant pots on the wall are not ordinarily made from usual materials we are accustomed to, but dusty pipes. Taiwijit thinks it is not challenging enough to just throw away anything when they cannot or 'thought of not' be longer in use. So, he put dusty pipes into 'new life' as tree pots.

Taiwijit always have good eyes for old, thrown away materials. One day, he saw the top surface of a table at a papaya salad (som tam) shop. Its dusty, old and disused character from the 1950, was appealing to him, thus he traded it with a brand new table only to take this orange and dusty top surface back home.

Well, it has not been really transformed yet, but it will. "Let it be at the moment, but I will not use it as a top table anymore. I like to use it in different functions, I'll see", said Taiwijit. For now, surely, I cannot see that you can put any food on top of it because it is used as a board for testing colours by the artist.

Another idea of bending dusty steels into a human shape for hanging flowers or fruits.

Taiwiji's favourite place to hang out is not a deparment store or art places, but 'old things' shop.  He thinks discarded materials have interesting forms in themselves, especially if you can turn them into 'new' functional objects, it is certainly worthwhile.

"The challenge is in your imagination", he said.