I’ve come to the end of my six month journey of digging through tons of trash at the city dump. Someone asked me how this experience has changed me. I really don’t think that I’ve been “changed” much at all. I’ve never had any deep, visceral reactions to all garbage that I’ve “touched” through the months. In fact, as a young child going out to the small town dump with my dad, I quickly realized that there were amazing “treasures” to be found at every turn. I do recognize that “trash” is, indeed, a part of our throw-away society. I also recognize that I’ve been part of an amazingly creative “Glean Dream Team” program designed not only to keep some of that garbage from heading to our landfills, but also to allow us to seriously begin to think about where we are headed in our need to discard the many artifacts from our daily lives. As Amy Wilson, our glean project coordinator so aptly stated, we’ve been “ambassadors working in the belly of the beast.” You can have one final look at all of us in that “beast’s belly” in this video made by a videographer from San Francisco (Micah Gibson) who had previously been one of the artists in their glean program.
I will continue to occasionally add to this blog, but it will obviously move away from the glean program. I’m in the process of doing a “thorough” cleaning of my garage/studio, and have already started the process of handing off many “trash treasures” to other artists. I’ve decided that I can’t keep everything that I’ve collected, nor do I want to. Pushing all my art aside for the time being, I’ll be off to New York City soon, and headed up the coast of eastern Canada to visit a part of the country that I’ve never seen before. The big international art show this winter in Miami Beach (Miami Basel) is calling to me. I’m eager to go once again to see what other “recycled” artists around the world are doing with their trash.
And now...I’m thinking that it’s time to throw away these leather gloves!
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