January 10, 2015
Today, my partner and I conducted a site visit to RAIR (Recycled Artists in Residency) located at the Philadelphia-based recycling plant Revolution Recovery. Revolution Recovery is an environmentally-friendly, sustainability-focused trash sorting center. Their main clients are predominantly large scale corporate and industrial projects that need to dispose of massive amounts of waste. The recycling center was approached by artist Billy Dufala, half of the art duo The Dufala Brothers and a former member of the popular band Man Man. Dufala proposed a partnership between the recycling center and artists who might want to use the material waste for sculptures and projects. Avi Golen, a co-founder of Revolution Recovery, was for the idea and thus RAIR was formed. RAIR invites artists from across the US to pick through the trash and the materials that are dumped at the recycling plant to create art projects that raise awareness about sustainability. While touring the facility and the artists’ studios, I got a sense of the social and environmental importance (and relative ease) of sourcing art materials from the trash. Dufala and Golen spoke at length about the kinds of incredible objects they’ve pulled from the trash: everything from expensive boots still in the box, a cheetah pelt, an actual shark fetus in a jar, and miles of christmas lights.
The exhibitions RAIR puts on have included massive trash-sourced sculptures, Rube Goldberg contraptions, trash-bowling and much more. Currently, they’re in the selection process for their next batch of residents.
In terms of my own project, I was inspired to appropriate trashed material for a public art project. I came across a peg-board which, though dirty, seemed like it had the potential to be turned into a fun game. I went to a hardware store and bought bolts. I cleaned and modified the pegboard in a small way, added a marker on a string, and created a fun little ‘connect the dots’ game.
I was delighted by the fast response! Just hours after I installed it, people were drawing on the pegboard. To me, this was a success because it accomplished three of my goals:
Create a piece which inspires people to directly interact with their environment in a positive way.
Use recycled material (a la RAIR and Revolution Recovery)
Create something which is accessible to a broad audience, that was not necessarily expecting to see art.
So now that I’ve been able to apply what I’ve learned from my site visit and my interview with a local Philadelphian street artist, I’d like to create a larger piece which addresses more important social concerns. This next project will probably play off of my initial inspirations.
