VISUAL ARTS

Garbage in the Gallery and the Art of Dumpster Diving

A group of Portland artists has been combing through the trash to make art from what the rest of us throw away.

By Megan Haverman August 12, 2015

Tiger With Collar, by Rio Wrenn

Rio Wrenn collects metal: often industrial objects, but she finds things on the street and at estate sales too. She uses this rust empire to stain fabric for textile design. In GLEAN, an almost-complete iron stove will become a throne in her fashion show/performance. “My theme, when I started, was ‘spiritual warrior’ and what that means in society. I was thinking of Mad Max… of scrapping things together. It’s more of a war on your soul.”

Firehose Exp. #5, 2015, by Brenda Mallory.

Brenda Mallory’s linear stripes and vertical compositions have carried her away from organic forms in recent years, but retain the same texture. In the Disjecta show, styrofoam boxes will provide the material for a hodge-podge wall installation; very Sarah Charelsworth–meets–Nan Jun Pike. On her trash hunt, she even snagged a pair of sneaks for herself, explaining, “It’s a bit like gambling. It’s hard to leave because you never know what the next truck is gonna bring.”

Mechanical Girl, by Schel Harris

Schel Harris once worked for Disney on Ice, but now focuses on fantasy paintings and illustrations, dabbling also in sculpture for which he scrounges all of his materials. For the GLEAN show, he found 12-15 foot rolls of raw copper piping to make a robot monkey. His other pieces on display? “Modern Da Vinci flying machines. I guess you could call it Steampunk. It functions [mechanically]—doesn’t fly, but it looks like it could.”

Horned Coot, by Beckey Kaye

Beckey Kaye is an activist and puppeteer, and spent time in Southeast Asia to study the wooden rod puppets of Indonesia (wayang golek) before attending art school States–side. Inspired by the Caddisfly, which makes its cocoon of found pebbles and shells, she used handmade baskets to create a self-sized shelter. “It’s really staggering when you see these huge mountains of trash, and they’re so large that your body wants to relate to them as landscapes. So you’re seeing these mounds and crags and valleys of trash.”

Bound, by Brian Hutsebout

Brian Hutsebout has a background in graphic design and sculpture, which he has also put to use making shoves and rakes for Portland Fruit Tree. His dumpster discoveries were copper in pipes and wire, which he uses in abstract ‘bundles,’ new territory for the toolmaker: “It’s amazing—things you would think fit end up fitting—that’s not how I’ve worked, so I’m finding new ways to be an artist.”

Could your trash have the makings of a work of art? A group Portland artists appear to think so. For the last five months, they’ve been getting down and dirty with found objects from Metro Central Transfer Station (read: trash picked up at the dump), and the results are on show this week at Disjecta’s gallery space.

It’s all part of GLEAN, a program in its fifth year which sees San Francisco and PDX waste management systems team up, looping in local arts organization Crackedpots, for a “creative–reuse” program dedicated to challenging consumption ideologies.

We talked to the five artists set to show their work—ten pieces each, minimum—in the GLEAN exhibition about their dumpster finds, and how they’re keeping things fresh.

GLEAN opens at Disjecta on August 14^{th and runs through September 6.}

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Garbage in the Gallery and the Art of Dumpster Diving

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