Tag Archives: Waste

Waste Intervention

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“We are the Landscape” – Steven Siegal

Steven Siegal is an American fine artist that uses recycled material and pre-consumer products such as, newspapers, crushed soda cans, shredded rubber to create his public art installations in our landscape. He “reinvents the role of sculpture for an eco-conscious planet… that reflects the deposit-and-decay cycle that underlines the making of the land.”  Siegal has created these works all over the world in places like, Europe, Asia, and North America. His main objective is to create a conversation about the landscape and how our society is affecting it.

His sculptures act as interventions within our landscape, we have to stop and address the “elephant in the room” that is waste consumption.  There is a subtly to some of his works, specifically the ones that blend into the landscape, that I believe parallels the concealed issue of waste within out society. As scene in previous blogs and articles I have read, it is very difficult for us to see the mass consumption and issue that is waste and landfills because its impossible to physically see it all at once, but just because we cannot see it doesn’t mean its there.

In a way his work is acting as a solution by recycling material to create something new. His first objective is to show the world its waste but his underline message provides a solution of recycling or some sort of waste management. As I have scene while researching this topic, there are plenty of solutions to tackle this issue, and it seems to all point back to recycling and how we discard or reuse materials.

“Sited Works” Series

Work Cited:

To Recycle or Not Recycle?… That is The Real Question

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As I was cleaning the printmaking studio I work at last night, there was a water bottle that was left on a table so I emptied it and went to recycle it, but there was no recycling bin in the room so what did I do I threw it in the garbage.. opps But I know many people do the very same thing. I like to say that if there was a recycling bin in the room I would have recycled it, but thats a simple excuse. And the fact is there was a recycling bin right out the door of the room.

So why do people not recycle?

  1. recycling is “inconvenient”: This is most likely the main reason people do not recycle, but is probably the weakest argument. We are just being lazy.
  2. no space to recycle
  3. what is in it for me: We can’t see the benefits of recycling.
  4. recycling doesn’t make a great difference, so whats the point?
  5. it just to hard: “I have to have everything separated and go to certain facilities to recycle certain products”
  6. who cares
  7. I will recycle next time… yah right
  8. does recycling really save money. Buying a brita filter water bottle, you still need to buy expensive filters all the time
  9. someone goes through the garbage and pulls out the recycling: nope thats a poor myth

BUT

there are many reasons we should

  1. recycling saves energy: it save energy because the manufacturer doesn’t have to make something new
  2. helps to reduce the changing landscape from landfills: we are running out of space for landfills therefore we need to find ways of recycling
  3. recycling is good for the economy: recycled goods use less material, saves money, and materials
  4. protects the wildlife and our resources: if we don’t recycle the waste it could end up in oceans or other animal habitats which ultimately destroy their habitats
  5. would help aid our climate problems: reduces greenhouse gases
  6. limits pollution
  7. creates jobs
  8. increases new demand for recyclable products
RECYCLE

RECYCLE

We need to start making space to recycle and make it a number one priority . We are constantly making up excuses for why we can’t when really the answers are pretty simple. If there isn’t a spot for you to recycle in our everyday life, then but in bin in there. Be proactive. We may not see the need to recycle right away, but it will help in the long run and for future generations. As seen perviously in the Mobro 4000, we are running out of room to store our waste therefore we must recycle.

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The Garbage Traveller: Mobro 4000

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I have recently been researching the negative effects of recycling and I came across the Mobro 4000. The Mobro 4000 is a infamous barge that carried 3000 tons of New York Cities garbage up and down the coast lines trying to find somewhere to port. The Mexican Navy denied the entrance into its waters. along with various ports refused to dock the barge, therefore it return to Long Island.The barge was given a temporarily restraining order. hat created a controversial legal battle and debate about recycling and the waste in America. This issue sparked a campaign for a more environmentally friendly way of reducing our waste. I think this was quite embarrassing for the United States that they had to make such a large failed trip around the coast because they had no room to put their waste. but I believe it was something that needed to happen to show the world this ever-growing problem.

Mebro 4000

Mebro 4000

As was shown, we do not have room for all this waste our world is creating, we are running out of space for landfills and they are changing the landscape of our world.

I found out that a children’s book was created to illustrates the importance of “reducing, reusing, and recycling.”

Here Comes The Garbage Barge! BY Jonah Winters

Here Comes The Garbage Barge! BY Jonah Winters

Here’s a video that documents some of its travels:

“Because it carried what was to many essentially a pile of nothing, the “gar-barge” was, as it was called, became a magnet for symbols. As it trawled down the coast, the barge was, variously, a clarion call for recycling (before an inevitable backlash), a toxic ticking time-bomb, a signal of a country gone to waste, or the punchline of a joke, in that Barthesque, sad funny way. That’s all captured quite well in the first installment of Retro Report, a new documentary series in collaboration with the New York Times.”

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Trashy Art, Trashy Artist…

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Today I found a group of artists that are working in similar ways to create their artwork. All the artists use trash, objects, scraps, recycling, waste, the list goes on, to create wonderfully composed images.

The first artist I found was Bernard Pras. Pras is a French artist that creates assemblages and anamorposis illusion that must be viewed from a particular vantage point to reconstitute the intended image. As seen in previously explored artist in this blog, the artists are using trash to give the objects a “second life,” as well as, showing the world our waste.

The second artist I found was Sarah-Jane van der Westhuizen. Westhuizen is another environmentally friendly artist that spends her time finding her material at a dump instead of buying new products at a store

at here’s a look at her recycled sculpture:

The third artists was Jason Mercier. Mercier creates 3-D mosaic portraits out of various products and wastes. “Each portrait is created from the celebrities own discarded objects and junk such as broken sunglasses, make-up, gum wrappers, jewelry, deodorant, shoes, and other items.”

Here’s some images from the Celebrity Junk Drawers Series:

The final artist I found that uses trash to create a masterpiece is Tom Deininger. Tom Deininger uses any material he can find to create is works. He sends his assistants out every week to collect as much trash as they can find for his shop. In an interview on Interactive lend, he says that “one thing that entertains me is the appropriation of an object to serve a function other then it’s intended use.”

Here’s a link that goes through showing different angles of his “lips” piece. You can see the amount of detail and trash that goes into one work and how the work is composed to make a larger image.

As you can see all these artists use trash and recycle materials to create there works. They understand the issues of todays problems regarding our consumer waste and recycling problems or lack there of.

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Shadow Art

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Tim Noble & Sue Webster

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

I have found another great find of trash recycled for composing a beautiful work of art. Tim Noble and Sue Webster, began working together when they met in university. They now have been creating works for many years and have created a series made up trash and recycled items. These known ‘garbage pickers’ of the London streets, use trash and recycled items to compose piles of trash where an image is created when light is projected in front of it. They are taking the mundane and otherwise dead objects and creating a new life for them, as well as, activating the discussion of going green and the importance of recycling.

Webster commented on there work stating that: “Our work is incredibly unsocial. There has to be complete darkness because you need to give the light and then to take it away again.” I think this can relate to the issue of waste and recycling in North America. We must shine a light and expose the incredible large amounts of landfills and recycling issues on this continent so it will no longer be a silent, unseen issue.

 

Work Cited:

Vic Muniz

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After looking at that documentary in my last posting I wanted to discover more about that artist Vic Muniz. He began as a sculpture but later became interested in photography. He main focus is to incorporate different objects and materials, often garbage or wasted material to create iconic historical works of art or new images.

This exhibition, Pictures of Junk from 2009 shows from work that raises questions about the nature of representation. For this particular exhibition, Vic Muniz created new images in the series Pictures of Junk by working with garbage and waste such as bikes, crushed soda cans, rusty chains and old tires, etc. “Muniz creates works after mythological subjects by famous painters, from Cranach’s Apollo and Diana to Bourguereau’s Orestes Pursued by the Furies. In this series, Muniz meditates on the artist’s eternal quest for the ideal in regard to specific historical environments.”

He continued his exploration with garbage and waste in his series presented at the Berardo Collection Museum in 2011, called Pictures of Garbage.

 

Just last year in 2012 Vik Muniz created a series called Scrap Metal. Similar to his garbage creations, he used scrap pieces of various types of metals to create his images of oversized animals.

I would like to focus on the work “Tweet” from the series “Scrap Metal.” As described on his artist website, Tweet, is “a chirp from a bird, an on-line posting of 140 characters or less. For many the definition of tweet, a chirp from a bird, still has the same kind of meaning – instant communication that is very brief… we witness more and more pedestrians striding through life with heads buried in gadgets… looking around as we go about our daily journey is being lost to an ever more fragmented and hectic contemporary society.” This image along with the rest of the series uses pieces of scrap metals to create the animals so you will take a closer look at the image as you search for any metal that is recognizable similar to what we should be doing in life.

The artists used garbage and scrap material that we essentially be no longer used and gives it a second life. He points out that our waste whether electronic or material waste, or consumer waste is affecting our daily lives and our environment and something needs to change. He is using his art as a platform to show the issues of environmentalism and recycling.

Being sustainability is on everyones minds and is a large issue today. We need to open our eyes and really take a look at the world around us.

Work Cited

http://vikmuniz.net/news/tweet-childrens-museum-of-the-arts-new-york-ny-september-24-january-25

http://artnews.org/vikmuniz/?s=1

Vik Muniz Scrap Metal

 

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