I used to be a packrat, but I’m working on it. This is the garage at my grandmother’s house where I store all my junk. Getting rid of it, little by little, aiming for minimalism. Accumulation is the first step in the cycle of excess. Let go.
There’s still too much crap here, but I managed to get rid of some and organize what’s left.
Claudia Borgna is an installation and performance artist whose main medium is recycled plastic bags. Her work is a comment on the way we live and how it affects the environment, but she adds “… it’s a non-judgmental comment, since I haven’t really resolved for myself, and never will, its contradictory nature of beauty and danger.”
I discovered Claudia from a photo in the McColl Center artist’s section of Mitchell Kearney’s website.
…a Mercedes Pens? Well honey, you’ll just have to talk to The Pen Guy about that. Costas Schuler is one of those rare people with so much energy it jumps out at you across the internet and licks your hand. His other blog, Art Car Central, is the only art car link I keep in my bookmarks bar now. It’s a good-looking, complete and well-researched source – and then there’s the content: he finds stuff I’ve never even heard of! Hats off to The Pen Guy… and stay tuned. He’ll be part of the traveling Visible Trash expo I’m planning for 2010.
Andy Gregg’s passion for bicycles had him working in bike shops as soon as he was able. After studying design and fine art, he merged passion and profession and has been creating elegant pieces of designer furniture from discarded bike parts since 1990. His company is called Bike Furniture Design and is located in Marquette, Michigan (USA).
I went through a trashformation of my own last month when I had to go back to Charlotte, NC to clean up a mess at my grandma’s house. While I was there I worked on some of my own mess, boxes and boxes of STUFF stored in a friend’s garage. Lesson 1 (emotional) – learn from the past then let it go. Lesson 2 (physical) – THROW SHIT AWAY!!!
There’s a line between yanbuki and packrat, and I sure don’t want to cross it. Eek!
Media alert: A piece I wrote called “Timeline of a Transformation” was included in David Barringer’s new book, “What Happened to Us These Last Couple Years?“.
The fun thing about trash is that even when it’s old it can still be good. Unless it’s stinky trash, but that’s not my thing. Let me direct your attention to the issue of trash in space, vintage 2004.
Ever wonder where electronics go to die? Here’s a gem I just dug out of the trash for ya.
Every year, 35 million tonnes of electronic waste is exported to China to be scrapped. There the rubbish is broken down by hand, poisoning workers and polluting the environment. “Smoke from the computers is too strong to breathe”, complains one disposal worker. “I feel dizzy and can’t see any more”. Many employees at the electronic disposal plant suffer from respiratory illness or skin diseases. They work for ten hours a day, with no protection from the hazardous chemicals.
See it on YouTube courtesy of Journeyman Pictures.
Oooh, and while we’re on the subject of e-waste, check out this video from India.
Hmm, sounds like a good name for one of those suburban condo developments. Remember my post a while back on trash activist Jo Hanson? Well, this post is also about one of my favorite places I’ve never been to, the San Francisco dump. The pics were taken by Marijke Rijsberman and posted as part of an article on her visit to the dump on Landfill Diaries. The spring sculpture lives in the adjacent sculpture garden, part of Jo Hanson’s legacy.
NYC Trash Worship yanbuki Rolando (a.k.a. recycle and pray) sent this pic of an East Village rasta friend. “He’s vanished now,” says Rolando, “but plenty of elderly Chinese women have taken his place. The more daring cart trains move along in traffic right on the double yellow traffic divider lines; they’ve established this unique right of way without waiting for a local law like the bicycle lanes have.” How’s that for symbiosis?
When Richard and Judith Selby Lang started cleaning Kehoe Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore in 2000, carrying bags and bags of plastic garbage away, they had no idea what they would find or what would happen. Certain items would catch their interest, from undifferentiated pastel shards to disposable lighters. Back in their studio, as they sorted and categorized their findings, they noted an unaccountable proclivity. Some of the pieces had a color resonance with their Fiesta Ware dinner plates. For their show at Cafe Museo they have made prints of the factual and the mysterious arrangements of beach plastic on the plates.
They say about their work:
“Our work reflects our long held views about the purposes of art. Art can be beautiful and challenging. Art can be political without being polemical. While the content of our endeavors has a message about the spoiling of the natural world by the human/industrial world, our final intent is aesthetic and celebratory.”
text courtesy of the artists
Today I discovered HA Schult, working with trash in art since the 60′s and most known for his monumental installations of Trash People. Read his interview in E-Waste Insights. Since I like my trash visible, here’s a pic.
