everydaytrash

Today I spent part of the afternoon paging through binders of slides in the back of a Soho gallery, conducting background research for the next everydaytrash special event.  Following on the success of Literary Trash—a week of interviews with trash authors that has blossomed into a semi-regular feature—will be Artistic Trash, a week of interviews with trash artists.  You’re going to love it.  Or hate it.  Either way, I hope you let me know in the comments because you slackers really need to get more interactive. 

  A friendly tipster alerted me to the fact that NYC’s trash artist in residence, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, has an upcoming show.  She has at least one piece, an installation created from a garbage truck, on display February 23-26 at the 2007 Armory Show.

According to Amy Zimmer’s article in yesterday’s Metro:

The booth will feature elements of her past works, such as “Touch Sanitation,” where from 1977 to 1980 she followed routes in all five boroughs to shake the hand of each sanitation worker and say, “Thank you for keeping New York alive.” At P.S.1 in 1987, she created “Re-entry,” a 90-foot sculpture made from 11 tons of recyclables. “I wanted to make it like building blocks so you could imagine [these objects] really could have another use,” she said. Her “Ceremonial Arch Honoring Service Workers in the New Economy,” which was made with 12,000 dirty gloves from sanitation and other workers, graced the World Financial Center in 1988.

Ukeles past work includes pieces highlighted here on the Avant-Guardian’s online ‘textlet’ on “Cycle-Logical Art” and these photos of Fresh Kills, the massive land fill that will one day form the base of a massive park.

  I had heard that the Department of Sanitation had a volunteer artist in residence, but I didn’t realize that Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the woman who has held the job for the past thirty years, had also written a series of radical manifesti (scroll down for Maintenance Art Manifesto 1969).  Curious what the city’s public artist has to say after all these years on the job?  As luck would have it, Ms. Ukeles spoke about reclaiming the land at the New School in May and that conversation is available for download.   The talk was part of a cycle on “Forgiveness” at the New School.  I’m not sure what that means, but it sure sounds cool.