Paper clips, pencils, erasers, tape: These are tools students use to organize infor-mation. In the hands of some artists and artistic thinkers, however, they are much more. 

Diem Chau’s usual medium is porcelain, but sometimes the Seattle artist carves crayons. Here, out of astrological order, are the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac: monkey, pig, goat, snake, rat, rooster, dragon, horse, dog, rabbit, tiger, and ox.

Elizabeth Duffy’s miasmic Early Bird is made with pencil points stuck into erasers. The Rhode Island artist says she finds “secret beauty in the ordinary.”

Zachary Abel, a graduate student in mathematics at MIT, fashioned thisBorromean Box out of 81paper clips, or 27 sets of three. In each trio of paper clips, no two are linked, but somehow all three are linked – in a construct mathematicians call Borromean rings.

Brazilian artists Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo made this enormous maze out of 250,000 used and new books as part of an exhibition that accompanied the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The design of the labyrinth was based on the finger-print of writer and noted bibliophile Jorge Luis Borges. 

Michigan artist Eric Daigh makes portraits out of pushpins, showing that, no matter how complex human beings may seem, we can all be reduced to a formula. (Think DNA.) “We are products of just a small handful of variables,” says the artist. “In five colors of plastic, you can be reproduced.”

A tape dispenser appears to sit beneath a porcelain sheet in this piece from Canadian Jade Rude’s Whiteout series, “reminiscent of a white cloth draped over furniture that is no longer in use,” says the artist. Rude aims to highlight objects quickly approaching obsolescence as digital technology advances.

Inspired by sea urchins, Jennifer Maestre makes sculptures such as Cycad with hundreds of colored pencils. The Massachusetts artist cuts the pencils into 1-inch segments and then drills holes to make them into beads. Finally, she sharpens the pencils and combines them into various spiky forms using a peyote stitch.