MixedMedia

Great looking announcement that was passed along today. The sponsors, PBS and the creators of the television show Design Squad, are looking for some sport. Hook up with some yung’uns and pitch in – looks like fun!

Click here to download the Trash to Treasure Flyer

While in New York recently for a “Greening the Arts” symposium [see below], I had the very good fortune to meet an artist, preservationist, and self-described “recycling fanatic” Victoria Romanoff. Touring her converted firestation – which serves as her home, studio, and office – I was struck by how full and well-lived her life is, a life reflected in a rich, multilayered perspective so richly conveyed in everything that she produces. The title of this post is inspired by what little I gleaned of her life and work and our shared interest in cities and towns, and our efforts to incorporate their influence into our artwork.

Victoria has this eye for the scuffle, bumps, and scrapes of life that are bound up in a scrap of wood or painted façade alike. Her materia prima is the detritus of decline – joints, pulleys, columns, slats, plugs, rods, handles, adornments and other objects salvaged from the waste-streams of the new-obsessed.

A group show curated by Ms Romanoff, titled “Haven’t We Met Before,” was recently brought down at the Thomkins County Public Library – I wish I’d been there in time to see it! Nonetheless, an exhibition catalogue is available online and I was able to both see a few of the works and get a better sense of the materials that compose her works during our visit.

Most important to me, I was introduced to the range of motifs captured in her dense works. I caught whiffs of the gothic, romantic and even baroque mustiness bound up in these very modern works (Constructivism meets Duchamp with a nod to Rauschenberg’s ‘combines’?). Here is her artist’s statement for the “Haven’t We Met Before” show:

I like to conjure up lost civilizations, improbable resorts, crumbling monuments, over-the-top architectural follies, opinionated statutory and other imaginary settings. Along with that, I enjoy puncturing pomposity and do my best to lead the viewer astray with absurd but hopefully humorous titles. My sculpture is always built from recycled elements: discarded wood, architectural remnants, cardboard tubes, old ropes, washboards and other flotsam and jetsam. The paper mosaics, as well, are reborn from scraps cut out of previous creations.

As far as I can tell, just about all of her materials could be found at historic preservation sites and dumps, which she gives new life through spontaneous composition, clever joinery, and uniform coating treatments. Another interesting aspect of Ms Romanoff’s work is that is serves equally well as functional and decorative works.

One disappointment: there’s not alot of her work online. You’ll have to meet her yourself and seek out every opportunity you can to find her works on view!

[Both images are nicked from the Thompkins County Library exhibition materials and the Havent We Me Before Catalogue]

Remember when we were kids, how we’d be eager to get to the baby sitter’s early before school so we could catch 15 minutes or a half hour of Speedracer, Marine Boy, or Underdog? Then afterschool we’d rush back to catch Banana Splits, later it was He Man? By the time we were in high school we’d graduated to soda pop, MTV and illicit puffs of cigarette.

Today, I think that’s old hat.

My daughter is six, and her grandfather – an ex systems engineer – sent her an XO-loaded One Lap-top Per Child computer. I couldn’t believe the first words out of her mouth were, “Can I Google ‘lions’?” Next it was, “What about ‘Griffins’?” Finally, “‘Dragons?’”

Its a whole new world of electronic babysitting. If her time wasn’t moderated, I am certain she would spend hours with “Big G”, “Uncle G” or just plain “Goo Gool.”

I am convinced there are at least a few benefits:

• Helps her sort out her spelling – the old, “Did you mean…” is a default spell-checker as well as exposure to lots of new words and navigation
• Exposes her to the many different interpretations of the same thing (images)
•  Helps out her fine motor skills with that tricky mouse and trackpad

One of the areas Peace Tiles will be developing curriculum and initiatives around in 2007 is Children and Waste.  I am beginning to pull together some resources, facts and figures.  I’d love your support and involvement!  Please help me understand this issue better from various perspectives and fields.

Sometime in 2007, according to U.N. estimates, more than 50 percent of the population of the planet will live in cities for the first time.  200 years ago, the urbanized population was around 3 percent.  Each week, approximately 1.3 million people leave small towns and the countryside for a life in the city. A billion of these people, most of them children, will end up in the world’s fast-growing slums. Many of them will grow up earning a living on dumps.

In 1995 I spent 3 weeks in and around Dakar’s municipal dump, a landfill occupying what used to be a 2.5km sq. lake at Mbeubeuss.  The experience opened my eyes to several important findings.

First, depending on your perspective, the dump is either your entry or your exit into the urban economy if you are poor.  In Senegal, many youths — particularly those from the rural Baol region in the south — come to Dakar looking for work.  Finding none, and not wishing to return to the arid farms of their childhood, they occupy a niche at the dump.

A second discovery is that dump workers — often considered part of the informal economy in many countries — are almost always part of a network.  The entire life at the Mbeubeuss dump is organized into stratified networks around specific activities, principally ragpicking of various items (ie glass jars, cloth scraps, and metal parts), the cleaning and preparation of items for repair and reuse, craft workers, and those who sell items at market.

Third, there is a stunning variety of activity and livelihoods being made at the dump, producing significant value for the urban poor.  Items sold at market that are produced from materials reclaimed at the dump will sell for 1/5 of the price of “new” items in a market.  This makes everything from footwear to paint to luggage much more accessible to those who need them.

More soon… I’ll also be blogging about this topic at CraftCycle.net with my friend Darlene Charneco…