Garblogging would be a somber pastime if not for all the fun and creative people out there making incredible things out of trash. Seeking playful cheer in your life? Follow Haute Trash on Facebook. Trashtastic fashions made from whimsically reimagined materials.
Trashion at its best.
Mark your calendars and polish your hitchhiking thumb, it’s that time of year again. What time of year, you ask? Well, time for the good people of Beverly Mass. organize a wondrous community event called the Trashfinder’s Ball, a benefit for the local farmer’s market, now immortalized in a documentary film.
A trophy made from trash will be awarded to the person bearing the best “trash find” and there will be a catwalk to strut your stuff in recycled fashions. If you’re anywhere in the area, it’s Saturday, March 31, 2012 7:00PM at the
Franco-American Club, 44 Park Street, Beverly, Mass.
Go! Take pictures and send them my way!
On my way home from a lovely vacation in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, last week, I spent a day in the city of Querétaro where the sanwomen all wear orange.
Leaning
Sitting
On the go
Garbage truck Turkish style
This week in trash news:
Don’t know what to do with your career come August? Why not sign up to a 1-year program in upcycling design? Can’t believe I haven’t seen this before:
In the fall of 2008, Eskilstuna College started a course on sustainable development and recycling technologies. The course runs over two semesters and is intended for students who wants to work both theoretically and practically with the creation of new products from recycled materials.
You will have to work with practically everything from furniture restoration to the jewelry manufacture and use your imagination and creativity and you will certainly gain new insights into what sustainability really means.
This is really as cool as one thinks. [Apply here.] The work of this years trashtastic students can be followed at their blog, and their flickr. Personally, I’ve got my eyes on this vinyl record fruit bowl:
Vinyl record fruit bowl
The student will stage an end-of-the-year exhibition, open 27 May-20 August, at the college in Eskilstuna, so if you pass through Sweden, be sure to make a detour. In Stockholm, creations can be purchased at swop:art.
Calling all trashionistas: Ecotopia, a Polish website dedicated to fashion made from recycled materials, is hosting a contest to find the next great trashion design.
Ecotopia
Contestants are asked to:
Create a new cloth, accessory or jewellery, which can be manufactured from items, things, materials which are not needed any more, redundant or broken and should be thrown away as thrash. Please, try not to buy new things – try to use only what you have available at hand. Strive to maintain simplicity in your project, but do not forget about the resourcefulness, comfort and materials which are available for your use.
Finalists and an ultimate winner will receive prizes and be featured in an online publication, “Trash Book”. Entries are due by February 1. For a complete list of rules, click here (and scroll down for English). Via the ETSY Trashion Team blog.
If you walk down Valencia (which incidentally is a must when visiting San Francisco), you should stop by Casa Bonampak, at #1051, and take a look at these beauties. Best upcycled bags I ever saw, with bonus that they were made in a Salvadorian cooperative. Shop ’til you drop.
San Francisco bags
A colleague placed a collection box for used glasses in the kitchen at my office. Her son is collecting them for New Eyes for the Needy, an organization that recycles eye glasses in the U.S. and overseas.
via www.neweyesfortheneedy.org
Let me know if you have an old pair to spare. Or start a drive yourself.
So Laurapalooza yesterday was a big hit. I burned my face in the New Jersey sun again, but not as much as last time. Our flip flop hippo was item of the day, and we got pix with a president (coming soon). Also realized that people in Pennington have the cutest kids in the world. Many of them run around. Some are excellent trashion models:
Trashion poster child 1
Trashion poster child 2
Rewardrobe is a London-based consulting firm that advises clients on “slow wear” and the sustainability of their wardrobes. The idea, I think, is that they advise people how to pick items that last and revamp what they have so it reads fresh and fashionable in a modern environment. I wonder if the amount of shopping offset by this firm offsets the amount of energy generated to earn the cash to pay their fees. What do you think?
The latest in upcycling and trashion seems to be cuff links. Check out these cool samples, first one by Liza Hermeline from old typewriter keys, second one by David Wright from old circuit boards. Follow the links to purchase.
Cufflinks by Liza Hermeline
Cufflinks by David Wright
While the world’s AIDS advocates gathered in Toronto last week to discuss new research, technologies and strategies for tackling the epidemic, artist Adriana Bertini of Brazil filled the conference center with some much needed color, humor and fantastical imagination via a spectacular fashion/sculpture series of dresses made from condoms.
This is a blog about Oscar the Grouch. It’s about the smoke of burning trash piles wafting through every developing country in the world. It’s about the billions of dollars a year spent exporting garbage from one state to another. It’s about diving into a dumpster and coming up with a still-warm burger and three packets of mustard. It’s about detonating landmines with old truck tires and building bookshelves out of milk crates. It’s about barges. It’s about battery acid. It’s about paying sixty bucks for a change purse made of soda can tabs because the label says a women’s group in Latin America glued them together. It’s about sorting plastics. It’s about beaches built on landfills and landfills built on beaches. It’s about the “away” in throw away and the “out” in toss out and the “rid” in get rid of it. This is a blog about the art, money, power, politics, people and literature of garbage. It’s a subject that shocks and amuses me nearly every day, which is about how often I imagine I’ll be posting. I hope you’ll share in the fascination.
