potrero view
Photograph by Mary Purpura

Photograph by Mary Purpura

Eric Otto’s installation of discarded televisions.

April 2010

Garbage Transformed into Art at the Dump

By Mary Purpura

Every four months, at 503 Tunnel Avenue in Visitation Valley, there’s a two-day art show right next to the City’s dump.  It might seem like an odd location for artists to show their work, but the sculptures, paintings, installations, and drawings exhibited celebrate an ethic of reuse that makes the proximity to the dump perfectly appropriate.

The art is produced through Recology of San Francisco’s Artist in Residence Program, which funds Bay Area artists to spend four months working at the dump.  Every year since the program was launched in 1990, six artists have been sponsored; two are in residence at the dump at any given time. During their residency, the artists have access to a large, well-equipped studio space that includes a kiln and a complete woodworking shop. “We offer our artists all the tools they need, and a lot of support, both financial and practical,” said Deborah Munk, Artist in Residence program manager.  According to Munk, Erik Otto, an artist who completed his residency earlier this year, exhibited a piece that included 168 little wooden houses, all made from material scavenged from the dump. “People on the Recology art staff helped glue-gun all those little houses together,” laughed Munk.

Otto’s show, titled The Last Shall Be First, featured paintings on wood and a large sculptural work that incorporated the 168 houses. “I knew I wanted to do something hanging and large scale that created a bigger shape from many smaller shapes,” said Otto.  Heavier, bigger houses at the bottom of the piece sunk into a collapsing wooden platform.  Smaller houses hung above, spiraling all the way to the ceiling. “The houses on the bottom represent people working every day who have forgotten how much power we have in community. Those smaller houses rising above represented the release of our spiritual beings, our dreams, our hopes,” explained Otto. “I left a lot of surfaces unfinished to highlight the material.”

“In San Francisco, the current artists in residence, and two employees from St. Vincent De Paul, are the only people legally allowed to scavenge at the dump,” explained Munk. She stressed that artists in the residency program scavenge only from the public disposal area – the dump – not from any of the three bins that individual households use to accumulate waste. Garbage from the black bins goes straight to landfill, organic waste from the green bin is sent to Recology’s composting facility in Vacaville, and materials from the blue recycling bins are sorted to be sure that everything in them is actually recyclable.  The public disposal area – the dump – typically receives debris from small construction projects and people cleaning out their basement or attic.

There’s plenty of material at the dump for artists to work with. “You see the carnage of our lives when you’re scavenging at the dump,” said Christina Mazza, whose residency also ended earlier this year.  Otto agreed. “The residency really opened my eyes to how much we throw away as a society. I was surprised to see lots of perfectly good dry food—cereal, pasta, boxes of pancake syrup all in their original packaging—at the dump. You also see perfectly good furniture, fabric, tiles, all kinds of stuff that could be re-used. There were a lot of big, big TVs; TVs got big before they got flat. I’d estimate that 90 percent of the electronics thrown away still worked. Initially, scavenging was very exciting. But when I had collected all the material I needed for my work, it still kept coming. Eventually, the volume of stuff that’s being thrown out becomes overwhelming and somewhat saddening.” Except for paintbrushes, Otto was able to collect everything he needed for his artwork—even paint—from the dump.

Both Otto and Mazza felt that their art benefited greatly from their experience at the dump. “I definitely broadened my color palette,” said Otto. “Because I was committed to finding all my materials at the dump, it was like thrift-store shopping: the luck of the draw. They would have colors I’d never used before.” Otto included an installation with televisions in his show. “I had been considering something like that for a while, but that was definitely new for me.”

Mazza also found herself exploring new artistic territory. “Before the residency, I did black-and-white drawings on paper. For my show, I drew on found items, I did a mural, I worked with a cinematographer friend on a video, and I did an installation of wood siding pieces that looked like a patchwork quilt,” she said.  Mazza’s favorite find during her residency was a group of wooden crates. She drew on them with colored pencil, and filled in color with gouache. From each surface of each crate, a child’s face looked out. “That piece represented the heart of my message,” said Mazza. “It referenced the discarded memories and experiences of our lives that we’ve tucked into the corners of our minds; our parents’ divorce, a friend’s death from cancer.

They all make up a part of who we are and give us our strength and character. The crates, too, were discarded, and the children’s faces are innocent, asking the viewer, ‘Look at me, love me.’ That’s how we need to see these forgotten memories; not as an action that had intention, but simply as something that happened. By embracing these events, we become more whole.”

“The art staff at Recology was great, and really gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted,” said Mazza. “Being at the dump felt very liberating,” agreed Otto. “Coming from a gallery scene, where it’s make art, make money, on to the next thing, it was very refreshing to be working in a situation where it wasn’t necessary to sell a certain amount of work. Recology is not a gallery; they don’t need to sell to survive. My residency has changed the way I think about art and the business of art.”

“We love it when the artists sell something, but we don’t need them to sell something,” said Munk. “Our mission is to encourage people to recycle and reuse; to bring the public in contact with art and artists; and to provide a working space for Bay Area artists. That’s the point of the Artist in Residence program.  In the past, mostly sculptors have been in the Artist in Residence program, but we’ve encouraged photographers, videographers, and composers to apply. Right now, we have two performance artists in residence.”  One of the most memorable shows Munk remembers was that of composer Nathaniel Stookey’s.  “He made percussion instruments during his residency and wrote a score – called Junkestra – that was performed at his show by the percussion section of the San Francisco Youth Orchestra.”

“I presume that ten years from now, the artists in the program will be working with very different materials than what we’ve had available,” said Mazza, who recounted seeing lots of beautifully crafted, perfectly intact, wooden furniture during her time at the dump. “I’d also see particleboard furniture that was broken in pieces; you couldn’t do anything with it. I think there will be a lot more of that at the dump in the future.” Munk agreed that the materials society is discarding are changing: “Ten or 15 years ago, we saw lots of wood and metal in the black bins. Now they’re full of plastic.”

Recology offers popular tours – on the third Saturday and fourth Wednesday of each month – that include visits to the three-acre sculpture garden, artist’s studios, and a courtyard garden with planters made entirely from recycled materials. Applications for the Artist in Residence program are due in August. You can learn more about the application process here: http://www.sunsetscavenger.com/AIR/apply.htm

 Subscribe to The Potrero View

All rights reserved. Copyright © 2006 The Potrero View.

Content on this site may not be archived, retransmitted, saved in a database, or used for any commercial purpose without the express written permission of The Potrero View or its Publishers.