Tis the season for trash art, it seems. I feel like I’ve been getting daily tips on creative exploration of solid waste in various media. The latest comes via Freshkills Park (which has a Facebook page for those of you interested in keeping tabs on the conversion from landfill to massive public park). Tattfoo is a Staten Island-based self-described “community intervention artist” who recently took some lovely shots of Fresh Kills (such as the one above, ripped from the artist’s site).
Archive for the ‘Artistic Trash’ Category
tattfoo
Wednesday, December 3, 2008Plastic bags, Tibetan style
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
My friend Jennie, trash art connaisseuse, has passed on yet another find: Tibetan mandala patterns created by pasting together logo-laiden plastic bags. Craftzine recently featured artist Virginia Fleck‘s work. She also works with teens and makes colorful plastic skirts.
Second Lives
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The Museum of Arts and Design has a show up through February 15th called Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary. The exhibit, which features work from 50 artists, includes recycling in its highest form: artistic and funcional. Well, some of it anyway, from what I can tell based on this Brooklyn Based weekly listserv (forwarded to me by my friend, Jennie, whom I will be hitting up to accompany me to the show to see for ourselves. We had a great time checking out quilts and little creatures made from old bottle caps at the American Folk Art Museum last week. New Yorkers are advised to check it out. Disregard what I said about it costing $15 in the original post, the show is in fact free).
Despite the tip source, MAD is located in Manhattan. I ripped this photo from their Web site. It depicts a piece called Metal Jacket crafted by Korean-born artist Do Ho Suh entirely out of dog tags. Even in this tiny picture, the jacket looks very powerful. Also featured on the MAD site are a flock of butterflies molded out of old records (I’m a sucker for things made out of vinyl, it always looks so cool) and a flowing white gown made out of latex gloves. More to come once I’ve had a chance to see all this upcycling for myself.
Reblog: Styrofoam robot via Dinasoars and Robots
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Here’s the original post. This has got to be the best use ever for the space-shaped and, I thought but was clearly wrong, utterly nonreusable styrofoam pieces that come with just about any appliance one buys. This guy kind of reminds me of being a nature camp cousellor summers in Central PA. Each year the day camp chose a super hero like the Recycling Ranger and made one of the college student interns dress up and teach the kids stuff. I think it was the Garbage Guru who led us each week in the chant: “I say styrofoam, you say leave it alone.”
“Styrofoam!”
“Leave it alone!”
“Styrofoam!”
“Leave it alone!”
Ah, good times. I haven’t played recycle tag for YEARS. Remind me some other time to tell you about the camp’s director of Native American eduaction, the self-dubbed Injun Ed.
DUMPSTERS, TRASH and RUBBLE
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Photographer Manuel Branco takes pictures of dumpsters, trash and rubble. Like gartog colleagues Chris Jordan and Last Night’s Garbage, Branco’s work magnifies and abstracts these commonly ignored subjects. The result is a glossy and unique collection of images that dwell on color and force the viewer to examine discarded materials in a new light. Some of these photos can be found in the book DUMPSTERS, TRASH and RUBBLE – Elements of Abstraction which is for sale and will soon be updated in an expanded version. Check out more of Branco’s work on Flickr, JPG Magazine or imagekind.
Abundance: Dawson City Trash Project
Monday, November 10, 2008
This summer, artist Max Liboiron built a large-scale diarama of and about trash in the Yukon Territory of Canada. Using trash from the local landfill, she created an incredible artistic and educational space mapping dumping grounds past and present in Dawson City. The result is a deceptively simple landscape that speaks to our complicated relationship with what we throw away, and where we throw it. Here are a few images ripped from the project site.
For more on the creative process, check out the Dawson City Trash Project blog.
And for more on the artist, check out her other projects.
ScrapCycle
Monday, October 27, 2008Now this is my kind of show: a piece of trash is your entry fee for a night of experimental sounds and sights known as ScrapCycle.
Recycling & Resourcefulness: Quilts of the 1930s
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
From today’s Flavorpill:
“American Folk Art Museum unfurls 12 quilts that were sewn together from secondhand fabrics by women during the Great You-Know-What. The striking, variegated handiwork features materials as diverse as flour sacks and dressmaking scraps, and the handsome individual pieces match up with themes such as sunbonnets, the alphabet, and Chinese fans. More than salvaged vestiges of a once-prevalent pastime, the patterns are tidy examples of the functional achieving fine-art status.”
FYI, New Yorkers, open today through March 15, $9 to get in.
Photo of a string quilt via museum website
Dinosaurs and Robots
Monday, October 13, 2008
Today, via a tip from my friend Brendan to check out a post on Boing Boing, I discovered the adorably titled blog Dinosaurs and Robots. Today’s post on trash cars won me over right away, but I was further charmed by the mission statement: “Rather than focus on the newest trend, we will seek authentic, handy, rarefied, disgusting, illuminating, delicious, mysterious, intoxicating, commonplace, historic, intensely personal, entertaining and enlightened objects, both priceless heirlooms and exquisite trash.”
I’ll be tuning in for more examples of exquisite trash and sharing what I find from this and other blogs. Of course, with friends also combing the Web and the world, this job becomes much easier. Big ups to my tipsters, keep the trashy content coming!
Photo ripped from Boing Boing via Dinosaurs and Robots
Vivan Sundaram
Monday, October 13, 2008Artist Vivan Sundaram has been thinking about trash since the late nineties, as evidenced by the series of his large-scale photos of garbage on exhibit now at Sepia Gallery in Manhattan. Newsweek has the scoop.
Photo of “Fly” by Vivan Sundaram via Gallery Chemould
Waste Man
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Chikumbuso
Sunday, October 5, 2008
While in Zambia this week, I came accross a straw hamper in the waiting area of the Swedish embassy in Lusaka labeled “Chikumbuso“. It was decorated with an HIV ribbon woven from plastic bags and had a sign on it saying any old plastic bags placed in the hamper would be used to make new woven bags. It turns out Chikumbuso is a community center that serves widows, single mothers, grandmothers and orphans by running a school for the children and teaching women income-generating skils (such as how to make a bag out of old plastic bags). I tried to find the place online before leaving, but alas was not able to arrange a visit. I did find this sweet little video of the women singing, though.
Photo by LearnServe International, found on Flickr
Fancy Trash
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Famous people designed and sold their fancy trash cans recently to help the hungry and children. Check it.
Photo by Sara Jaye Weiss for Startraks, ripped from Media Bistro.
Chris Jordan, trash photographer
Thursday, September 25, 2008kw
I discovered photographer Chris Jorndan‘s series “Intolerable Beauty: Potraits of American Mass Consumption” via a helpful tipster yesterday. The panel above is ripped from the artist’s stock images on his site and links back there, where you can view a wide selection of his work. I highly recommend a click through.
Here’s some of what Jordan has to say about these landscapes of consumption:
“Exploring around our country’s shipping ports and industrial yards, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed to view like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity. “
Little Orange Kitchen
Sunday, September 14, 2008
The Etsy Trashion Blog has a nice little interview with Laura of Little Orange Kitchen on her salvaged paper designs (photo of hot Frida wallet ripped from Etsy).
everydaytrash 
