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Gleaning at the City Dump #91

8/20/2012

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I found a ready-to-go shadowbox in perfect condition at the dump...woo hoo !! It has a glass- covered lid that opens.

I decided to do a bit of a "re-vision" with one of my earlier trash pieces...putting it inside this white shadowbox.

It was a perfect fit and adds a new dimension of "class to my trash."

Interesting fact: For some reason I was finding lots of these glass doorknobs when I first started gleaning a few months ago. I don't see them anymore. The same thing with the pianos...I had three old pianos to pull apart, but haven't seen any more in the last several weeks.

This was an interesting find...a quiver of arrows. I had no idea what I'd do with them and ending up giving them to one of the other artists, Jen.

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Gleaning at the City Dump #90

8/19/2012

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Just a few more treasures found at the dump...old magazines, papers, music, books...all with great collage possibilities!

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Gleaning at the City Dump #89

8/17/2012

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One of the buildings (right next door to the facility where we do our gleaning) handles all the hazardous materials that come into the Metro Transfer Station. The "hazmat" workers occasionally get art supplies and paints, etc. They gladly give those supplies to us, dropping them off in our work area. They recently left us a big stash of tempera paint, both small and large containers. Even though all of this paint has been opened and used, most of the containers are still nearly full. Unfortunately for us, none of the five artists involved with this program use tempera paint in any of our work. One of the artists, Jen, dropped off these smaller containers at the SCRAP store (our local recycling store...scrappdx.org). We still have several gallon containers of "almost new" paint to deal with. I think that there must be numerous organizations in our city that would love to have these for some art program that involves kids...I'll have to do some detective work. These supplies really shouldn't end up at the landfill. We wonder how they ended up at the dump in the first place.

Yes...these are antlers! I brought them home with me from the dump, but I'm wondering how on earth I'm ever going to use them...yikes! It's hard to tell from the photo, but they are quite large.

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Gleaning at the City Dump #88

8/16/2012

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We are having one of our Pacific Northwest HEAT WAVES right now...it will be 100 degrees or more in the Portland area today, so I'm going to avoid going out to the dump today, and probably tomorrow. It's gotta' be a tough job for those workers who have to be in that facility during this kind of weather. Even with the best weather conditions, they do not have an easy job.

I'm continuing to post a few more photos of those miscellaneous kinds of things that I'm finding at the dump. I carry a camera with me constantly while on the job. As usual, some of these things I keep for myself, some I leave in our work area for the other artists, and some are left exactly where I find them in the bay, ending up in our land fill in eastern Oregon.

We've had two old phonographs turn up, both of them found by one of the other artists, left in our work area. I kept this smaller red one...brought it home...it actually "plays," but I need to find a way to turn up the sound a bit. I may end up taking it apart and using the guts for one of my pieces.

I've now got a nice collection of super 8 film, none of which I'm able to view, however. It'll be fun to somehow work them into a mixed media piece.

Yes, I found a few more plastic foosball players, but not an entire game this time.

Someone off-loaded a big plastic bin filled with rotting apples. The entire end of the bay had a strong fermented apple smell. Nope, I didn't bring these home with me!

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Gleaning at the City Dump #87

8/15/2012

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I found a couple notebooks (art pads) at the Transfer Station yesterday...both of them had several drawings done by some child. It was almost like finding a little pictorial diary, documenting the early life of the child in drawings. I'm wondering why the parent didn't want to save these treasures. Have a look :

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Gleaning at the City Dump #86

8/14/2012

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A few more treasures from the dump:

I found this ready-made shadow box...perfect condition, including a glass covered lid.

Photos are quite easy to find at the dump. Vintage photos from years ago are a bit more difficult, but they do turn up (see my blog #21)
I did have an interesting "photo find" with these hundreds of color photos, possibly documenting someone's trip to Japan...someone decided not to keep the memories for whatever reason.

This is a little plastic model heart apparatus...the kind of thing that a doctor would keep handy for demonstrating regular and irregular heartbeats. It's battery operated...as you pull out the little information cards at the bottom, the heart lights up in various ways. It's an interesting conversation piece...not sure how I'd use it in one of my assemblages.

I notice that someone has one for sale on ebay.

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Gleaning at the City Dump #85

8/13/2012

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I've completed a new piece with all materials coming from the city dump. One of the other artists, Chandra, found this Madonna statue...didn't want it...passed it on to me:

It's about 12" tall, made from some kind of fiber and plaster of paris material, but somewhat fragile. I sanded down the bottom to even it out, and applied gel medium to the whole thing to keep the peeling paint chips in place.

I used a wooden wine box, covered it with old encyclopedia papers...using alcohol dye and sanding for an aged look:

I cut apart a large piece of "fiber board," which looks to be something that a crafter might use for certain projects, and sanded down the edges (I'm clueless as to what this board was really used for, but I liked the target pattern).

I lined the inside of my wine box with this board, and gave everything a coating of gel medium to hold all the loose fibers in place.

The completed piece covered with glass:

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Gleaning at the City Dump #84

8/12/2012

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The Metro Transfer Station was filled with trash AND artist gleaners this weekend! Four (of the five) of us showed up on Saturday to dig for treasures that we could use in our art. It was just one of those serendipitous kinds of events...so many of us coming together at one time, which ordinarily never happens. Needless to say, it's much more fun being there as a small group...even a bit of a "bonding" experience.

Between the four of us we probably had more than four hundred pounds of stuff when we weighed out...I had the least, about sixty pounds.
The big event happened back at our work area at the far end of the Transfer Station. We "cleaned house." There was so much that we had accumulated (trash that we'd gleaned, but hadn't yet gone home), so we decided to get rid of it and start fresh. We have our own large steel dumpster which was already overflowing, so we began a pile beside the dumpster. I'm hoping that it's all cleared away this next week.

Jen and I shared the (new/wrapped) toilet tissue...there must have been upwards of a hundred rolls that had been tossed. We kinda' felt like we were at Costco !

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Gleaning at the City Dump #83

8/11/2012

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If you're new to my "gleaning in the dump" blog, you may want to go back to #1 to see what this is all about. Five of us, all local artists, are contracted to glean in the city dump for six months for art materials that we can use in our work. We have about a month left.

More treasures that I've recently found at the Metro Transfer Station (none of it being some of the "best" stuff that has been found so far).

Another artist found this old boot (actually a pair of them). It's still sitting in my tub in our work area at the dump. I'm trying to figure out how I might use it.

A pile of vintage linoleum...this was stuff was actually kind of cool. I took a couple pieces.

A pile of silverware. I had no use for it...Jen (the fashion artist) took it for one of her projects.

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Gleaning at the City Dump #82

8/10/2012

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I've completed a new piece using a variety of "trashed treasures," all of which came from the city dump.

1. an old drawer
2. artificial grass (from a small piece of "golf putting grass" that I found)
3. vintage photo
4. ball bearings
5. wedding cake couple
6. glass
6. pages from vintage encyclopedia
7. metal beads

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