One Man's Waste is Another Man's Warhol
by Steffani Jemison
But what, exactly, is the appeal of giant sculptures made out of six-pack holders? We see them every day, we throw them away—and we secretly hate ourselves for it, but that doesn't make the objects themselves any more interesting. Or does it? Christina Ritchie, Director of Vancouver's Contemporary Art Gallery and curator of a highly successful 1999 exhibit entitled “Waste Management,” explains that art made using recycled materials attracts us regardless of—or even because of—how much we hate the stuff. Most of us despise our dependency on the consumables that are at the foundation of our lives—which makes art that recontextualizes those objects all the more provocative. “Increasingly we define ourselves by what we buy,” she says, “therefore the objects we use and consume (and discard) are direct reflections of our values as a society. We look to contemporary art to help us reflect on and clarify those values.”
The value of art made from recycled objects is not to save the planet, at least not in a literal kind of way, affirms Estelle Akamine, fashion designer and textile weaver. “Some people think you have these arts programs to keep things from the landfill, and I don't think that's the idea.” A veteran of the “Trash to Treasures” program, Akamine argues that “when you add politics to the mix, you're talking politics, you're not really talking art.”
And yet, the found objects have lives and tell stories of their own. “The work I do could never have been done 50 years ago,” Jerry Ross Barrish says reflectively, “and it probably couldn't be done 50 years from now. The materials I use are coming from our industry and society now. The materials tell a story.” And indeed, it is easy to see that the history of those materials is written on the mermaids, musicians, and angels that he skillfully captures, mid-gesture. His kinetic figures tell their own, new, stories, stories which are nonetheless enriched, layer by layer, with the real or imagined histories of the found objects that make them up.
David Poppie summarizes: “An underlying current of my work is anti-consumerism,” he says, but “I'm not about to beat you over the head with it.” And he doesn't have to. Using recycled materials can liberating for the activist artist, now relieved of the pressure to scrawl “Live Vegan or Die” in red letters on the gallery wall to feel like he or she is saying something that matters. For better or for worse, we no longer have faith in the power of political manifestos or even artist's statements to generate change. Instead, artists who imagine a sustainable future can “lead by example,” says Poppie, by creating work that embodies the values they promote. “That's what I try to do.”
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