Fall 2005
In This Issue:
ENVIRONMENTAL ARTISTS
One of an artist's ambitions is to make us see the world around us in new and different ways, and maybe rethink our relationship to it. In this issue
of The Recycling Rag, we visit with three artists whose work comments on the environment and the way we relate to it by transforming trash into works of art.
John Dahlsen
Absolut Dahlsen by John Dahlsen
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John Dahlsen has been painting and sculpting in his native Australia for the past 20 years. In that time his work has evolved from the formal training he
received in art school to incorporating new elements also native to Australia - ocean litter: plastic bags, driftwood, rope and any other detritus washed up on the beach.
Now most of his award-winning work contains recycled materials - he even draws and paints on handmade recycled paper - and discarded rubber thongs or flip-flips
have become one of his signature media.
In 2004 he represented his country at the Olympics of Visual Arts "Artiade, " a juried exhibition for artists around the world held simultaneously with
the Olympic Games in Athens. His entry was a triptych of digital prints showing assembled waste items sorted into bright primary colors. Mr. Dahlsen will also compete in
the 2008 Artiade in Beijing.
Mr. Dahlsen was the first Australian to join the ranks of Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Francesco Clemente and Damien Hirst by completing a commission
for Absolut of Sweden in 2004. Absolut Dahlsen is one huge vodka bottle - it stands 13' 9-1/2" high and 4-11" at the base - made of fiberglass and steel on concrete steel
footings and covered with rubber thongs. It is exhibited on The Gold Coast City Art Gallery's sculpture walk, in Queensland, Australia.
In the U.S., his work can be seen in a show he helped curate, "Recycled Revisited: Artistic Responses to the Earth Charter" (through September 18 at
the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY, New Paltz, NY, (www.newpaltz.edu/museum). As part of a three-day art festival in Jefferson City, Missouri,. in August,
Mr. Dahlsen has been invited to create a public artwork from recycled plastic bags, another material he uses frequently. A month before his arrival, residents and businesses
throughout the entire city are collecting plastic bags of all colors and sizes and dropping them off at a bank and the Park Service office.
To learn more about John Dahlsen and his work, visit his web site www.johndahlsen.com.
Jeffrey O. Clapp
Mt. Everest canister bell with an added ribbon |
Jeff Clapp is a wood turner whose designs have been sold in galleries in New York, Maine and internationally. He is also a retired professional chef,
shipbuilding tinsmith and an artist who respects the materials he uses. "I don't like to waste anything," he told The Recycling Rag.
In 1994 a friend handed him an empty carbon dioxide canister from a restaurant (it puts the bubbles in soda). For fun Mr. Clapp put it on his lathe and
turned it into a bell. Impressed with its deep and melodious sound, he wanted to work with additional cylinders. He thought old oxygen cylinders from hospitals and nursing
homes would provide a ready supply, but they proved difficult to get because of the many federal regulations about the ownership and storage of used oxygen cylinders.
Mr. Clapp returned to wood turning until he saw a National Geographic documentary about trash left on Mount Everest by mountaineers. "Bells and
whistles went off," he recalled, as he realized he had found a ready supply of raw materials, could help clean up the environment and provide some financial help to the
people of Nepal. In February 2004 Mr. Clapp traveled to Nepal and brought back 132 cylinders that had been used and discarded on summit attempts of Mount Everest.
He purchased the cylinders from the Nepal Mountaineering Association who graciously thanked him for buying their trash.
Today Mr. Clapp turns each canister into a bell. He sells them throughout the world.
Chris Jordan
Chris Jordan is a photographer who sees the big picture. His images (some are 50 inches high and 8 feet long) are portraits of collections of consumer
waste as patterned, abstract shapes. Most of his subjects - crushed cars, discarded cellphones, recycled cans - were photographed in situ at waste facilities. "I want to give
a concrete sense of our consumption, with the real quantities," Mr. Jordan said, in a recent interview in The New York Times.
Sand & Gravel Yard by Chris Jordan 44" x 82"
A former corporate lawyer whose salary paid for his large-format photographic habit, Mr. Jordan left his job in 2002 to focus on developing new techniques.
"What I aspire to is to have the viewer look directly at the subject, as if they're looking through a window at the real thing." he told the Times.
Pole Yard, Tacoma, 2004 by Chris Johnson 44" x 60"
He will have three one-man shows in September 2005 in New York City; his hometown of Seattle; and Cesano Maderno, Italy. For further information,
check his website: www.chrisjordan.com.
BOOK NOTES
Arborsculpture: Solutions for Small Planet, by Richard Reames.
Imagine sitting in a gazebo made from a growing tree, resting your iced
drink on a living table. It's not weird - it's arbosculpture, an art form that uses a live tree trunk as the medium. These growing works of art and function continue to live and
grow thicker and taller with every season.
A botanist and practitioner who helped develop the art, Richard Reames explained, "By grafting, bending, framing and multiple planting, I grow useful, solid
flowering, fruiting, seasonally changing kinetic works of art and architecture." Sounds complicated, but it requires only a few tools - a pocket knife, a shovel, stretch ties and
pruning shears - and a willing young tree or two. In his new book, "Arborsculpture: Solutions for a Small Planet,"
Mr. Reames shares his decade of experience shaping thousands of trees at his Oregon nursery/studio and in the yards of his clients.
"By using live trees for the things that we traditionally killed trees for, we can preserve the large living trees and plant even more to reap all the benefits of live trees, like
their ability to remove carbon dioxide, the major culprit in global warming, from the air," said Mr. Reames..
You can see more arborsculptures at www.arborsmith.com. Richard Reames will also be
teaching a class in November at the John C. Campbell School of Folk Art in North Carolina.
Signs on the Wind: Postcard Collages, by Leonore Tawney.
Lenore Tawney (1907- ), is best known as a weaver of large hangings.
Her work is included in several collections, including the American Crafts Museum, whose former director, Janet Kardon, wrote, "By inventing the means to free weaving from
the boundaries of the loom, [Ms. Tawney] created fiber sculpture that hangs freely in space. ... She depends upon an ancient medium while exploring radically new formats."
Surprisingly, Ms. Tawney also created new formats in the medium of small collages that she mailed to friends and family. A friend, who received several,
considered this correspondence art "valentines" for any time of the year. Most were made of paper - photographs, newspaper clippings, magazine ads, manuscript pages in
foreign languages - with the addition of Ms. Tawney's own drawings and notations; there are no written personal messages. Fortunately, 81 of her postcard collages created
between 1961-1990 have been collected and compiled for this collection of witty visual songs without words.
Signs on the Wind: Postcard Collages is available through the
Eco-Artware bookstore.
Urgent 2nd Class: Creating Curious Collage, Dubious Documents, and Other Art from Ephemera, by Nick Bantock.
Nick Bantock, a painter and illustrator who expanded into writing books
(among them, the Griffin & Sabine trilogy and The Museum at Purgatory) has written a sort-of "how to" guide to creating art from paper fragments combined with
different techniques - stamping, photocopying and collage. The book's chapters focus on distinct materials or techniques: maps; engravings; money; photographs;
stamps; books and magazines; commercial ephemera; postcards; rubber stamps; photocopies; drawings; handwriting and type; games; and collage. Each chapter is
richly illustrated (the book contains nearly 200 pictures) and encourages the reader to get a few supplies and try some original ideas. The book is a treat to look at,
on its own, even if you decide not to get out the scissors and glue.
Urgent 2nd Class is available through the Eco-Artware bookstore.
CALL TO ARTISTS
The Kidscommons Children's Museum in Columbus, Indiana will sponsor an
art and fine craft show featuring artists who reuse and recycle
materials. Open to artists who are at least 18 years of age, it will
be held for one day; merit and purchase awards totaling $1500 will be
awarded. Entries must be postmarked by October 21. Visit
http://www.kid-at-art.com/htdoc/dejavu.html for further information
and to download an application form.
Join a community of recycling artists and clothing designers by
participating in Swap-O-Rama-Rama on October 9, 2005 at Clemente Soto
Velez Cultural Center in NYC's lower east side. Artists and designers
are invited to share their skills with a like-minded community by
teaching a DIY workshops and/or taking their own recycled designs to
the runway at this clothing swap and creativity workshop event.
http://www.swaporamarama.org/
email: wendy@gaiatreehouse.com
Do you
have a Call to Artists who work with recycled and reused materials to
announce? If so, we'll be happy to publish it. Please send the
announcement to
reena@eco-artware.com
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