We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kanye Tomiwa a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kanye, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

How did you learn to do what you do?

I taught myself over time. My background in architecture and design gave me a foundation for thinking in form, structure, and space, but everything else came through hands-on exploration. I started collecting wine corks and other discarded materials because I was drawn to their texture and history. Each one felt like it had a story. I didn’t have a formal guide, I just kept experimenting, combining these forgotten objects into something new. With every piece I created, I learned something. The process itself became the teacher.

Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process?

I would’ve trusted my voice sooner. For a while, I was hesitant to share my work or speak about why I was doing it. But once I leaned into the storytelling aspect, blending discarded materials with wine corks to highlight sustainability, memory, and identity, things started to move faster. I also think I could’ve reached out to other artists and creatives earlier to build a stronger network. Community helps growth.

What skills do you think were most essential?

The biggest one is vision. The ability to see value and potential in what most people throw away. Also patience. Working with thousands of tiny pieces takes time and care. My design training helped me understand scale, rhythm, and how to shape a composition, but I had to learn how to let the materials speak too. Storytelling is a big part of my process and being able to craft a message from broken or discarded things has become just as essential as the physical construction of the work.

What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

The biggest challenge was carving out my own path. There wasn’t really a blueprint for turning recycled wine corks and found objects into sculptural art. I had to experiment a lot and figure things out as I went. At times, it was hard to know where my work fit in or if it would be taken seriously. But I kept going because I believed in what I was building, a practice rooted in sustainability, storytelling, and giving new life to overlooked materials.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Kanye Tomiwa, and I’m a self-taught Eco-artist with a background in Architecture and Design. Over the past few years, I’ve collected over 500,000 wine corks and countless discarded materials, transforming them into sculptural art that tells stories about sustainability, memory, and transformation.

My journey into this work started with curiosity, picking up corks and wondering what they could become. What began as a small creative experiment has evolved into a full-time practice that blends design, storytelling, and environmental awareness. I create wall art, sculptural furniture, mirrors, pedestal installations, and public pieces all made with recycled materials and a strong sense of purpose.

What sets my work apart is the way I use forgotten objects to create connection. Every cork has a past. Every piece is built with intention. My goal is to create art that sparks reflection and brings warmth, soul, and story into the spaces it lives in.

I’m most proud of how my work resonates with people, from collectors and galleries to vineyards and community spaces. For anyone discovering my work for the first time, I want them to know that this isn’t just about art, it’s about finding beauty in the overlooked and giving voice to the materials and memories we leave behind.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

It all started with one Instagram reel. I had been creating for a while, but I finally decided to post a short video showing the process behind one of my wine cork pieces and to my surprise, it got a lot of attention. People were curious. They hadn’t seen anything like it before. That moment showed me the power of just “sharing the work”.

From there, I committed to showing up consistently. I started posting 4–5 times a week, not just to gain followers, but to help people take the work seriously. What I was doing wasn’t conventional. I was turning wine corks and discarded materials into fine art so I knew I had to be intentional about building that visibility and trust. Over time, my content became a way to educate people about the meaning and process behind my pieces.

I also started collaborating with other creatives, which helped expand my audience in really natural ways. Whether it was a stylist, dancer, or another artist, those partnerships opened up new perspectives and new eyes on my work.

My advice to anyone just starting out is: don’t wait for things to be perfect. Start sharing now. Show your process, your passion, even your mistakes. Be consistent, but also be real. People connect with honesty and growth. And remember, it takes time but every post is a seed. Keep planting.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When I first started collecting wine corks, most people didn’t really understand why. I’d walk into restaurants, tasting rooms, or local bars asking for their used corks, and I’d get these confused looks like, “Why corks?” To be honest, I didn’t have a full answer at the time. I just felt a pull to this material that held so much history and texture.

But I stayed consistent. I kept collecting and creating, even when it didn’t make sense to others. And as I started sharing my works especially on social media, something shifted. People began to see the vision. They saw the pieces I was building, the stories I was telling, and they started to care. That’s when things really changed.

Soon, people weren’t just saving corks for me, they were donating them. Some even started mailing them to me through my website from out of state. Over the years, I hit some major milestones; 10,000… 100,000… then 500,000 corks. It became part of my identity. Now when people see a cork, they say, “That’s for Kanye- the artist guy hunting down every wine cork he can get.”

That journey taught me the power of sticking with your vision even when it doesn’t make sense to everyone else. The resilience wasn’t just in collecting the corks, it was in believing the story I wanted to tell with them before anyone else could see it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kanyetomiwa.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kanyetomiwa?igsh=cnA1aWJicm5idjd4&utm_source=qr

Image Credits

Ballerina : Nardia Boodoo @narstarr

Photographer : Cthru – @cthru_

Photographer: Alvin – @peoplenthiscity

Photographer: Damien – @dcarterphotography

Art: KanyeTomiwa -@kanyetomiwa