Decorative Dumpster Day 2012

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Decorative Dumpster Day has been officially celebrated here at Olympia Dumpster Divers since 2009

Since then, we have continued to join with everydaytrash and The Visible Trash Society to salute the artists who turn dumpsters into works of art!

Ruby takes pics of the decorated dumpsters of Olympia and posts them on Flickr HERE

more Flickr pics at Decorated Dumpsters and Dumpster Art and  dumpsters and garbage cans

In Adelaide, Australia, they celebrate the Dumpster Biennale as part of the Street Dreams: Adelaide Street Art Festival; more info HERE and vid HERE

Plein air artist Christopher Martin Hoff (RIP) painted lonesome urban landscapes that included dumpsters

Past ODD Decorative Dumpster posts HERE and HERE

 

Happy Earth Month

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Hope you had a happy Earth Day/month!  We here at Olympia Dumpster Divers celebrated in a variety of ways:

Laura Sharp Wilson presented The Plastic Propaganda Poster Project at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Display case installation for The Plastic Propaganda Poster Project with pieces by Brian Taylor (print plate) and Ruby Re-Usable (baby)

Bellingham, Washington, hosted the first annual Recycled Art & Resource Expo, which included a screening of the Northwest recycle art documentary ReVision.

In Olympia, WA, artist George Kurzman opened up his green-built house during the Northwest EcoBuildings South Sound Green Tour.

The following weekend, Olympia celebrated Spring Arts Walk with a street party full of art and music and pageantry.  Art from recycled materials is always on display at Matter Gallery, which was an official part of Arts Walk, but Ruby Re-Usable took it to the streets and roamed around as Bag Lady, wearing her plastic bag tutu while pushing her shopping cart full of trash fashion fascinators.

How did YOU celebrate Earth Day/month?!

Wonderful Whirligig Workshop

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Wondering what we here at Olympia Dumpster Divers have been up to?  Well, one of the wonderful things we did lately was venture up north to Hutch Studio in La Conner, WA, where we participated in Chris Theiss’ whirligig workshop, along with fellow trash artists Deborah Paul, Jenny Fillius, and Ross Palmer Beecher.  You can see the video from that workshop HERE and more pics HERE

Ross trying on her whirligig

Ruby has not placed her whirligig outside yet (because she still needs to add some finishing touches), but Jenny has; check out Whirligigs in Motion, and read more about whirligigs in Washington State HERE

Art from Scrap

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Last month we told you all about the art heist at Matter Gallery; unfortunately,  we have no updates to report as of yet.  This month we are posting about Matter Gallery again:  forty of Matter’s artists have work in the Art from Scrap exhibit at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts.  Highlights of this exhibit include:

an assemblage by Vblast: 

She Weaves a Tangled Web by Vblast

a Mexican folk art-inspired piece by Loran Scruggs‘:

Our Lady of Bottle Caps by Loran Scruggs

a colorful baby by Ruby Re-Usable:

Crazy Quilt Plastic Patch Baby by Ruby Re-Usable

a plastic bag dragon by Bil Fleming and Christine Malek:

Polyethylene Fiend (detail) by Christine Malek and BIl Fleming

Art from Scrap runs February 3 – 28; see more pics HERE and HERE, read what Molly Gilmore wrote about this show in the Olympian and what Alec Clayton of the Volcano thinks (hint: he loves painting but doesn’t think the dragon is art) and then tell us about your favorite piece

The inspiration for this exhibit was the innovative and energetic Canadian group, ScrapArtsMusic, who performed at the Washington Center on 2/4/12

Recycle Art Thieves in Olympia

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We have been remiss in reporting what is happening in the world of art from recycled materials!  Here it is, 2012, The Year of the Dragon, and we have already broken all sorts of New Year’s Resolutions … like drinking less/posting more often … although we do have a good excuse this time: the weather here in Olympia (snow, ice, rain and wind, in that order) caused major power outages, and so we have been without internet for several days (as well as without electricity, phone, etc, but the liquor cabinet was well-stocked).  And while the city was crippled from this storm, some art lovers thieves took advantage of the situation to break into our beloved Matter! Gallery and make off with two pieces of art made from repurposed media:

Tribute To The Concussed Skier by Jud Turner (50″ diameter)

Horizons II by Jerry Williamson (56″ height x 40″ width)

Sometime late on Friday evening (1/20/12), the burglars (at least two) bashed in one of the skylights and rappelled themselves into the gallery.  The thieves took the artworks out the back door and were in the process of removing two additional works (Pat Tassoni‘s Space Needle Coat Rack and Ruby Re-Usable‘s Green Trash Gyre Baby) when they were apparently interrupted. Olympia Police recorded footprints on the skylight, floors, and walls.  There are still no suspects, but the media has been paying attention to this unusual art heist.

Read all about it: The Olympian, ArtLyst, the Huffington Post, and the Register-Guard; see some news clips on Q-13 FOX News and KOMO News

IF you have any info, contact Jo Gallaugher: jojo@matteroly.com

Space Needle by Pat Tassoni and Green Plastic Trash Gyre Baby by Ruby Re-Usable

all photos by Robert Snell

 

Upcycle Solstice/Happy Trashnukkah/Merry Trashmas

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We here at Olympia Dumpster Divers would like to wish you an Upcycle Solstice, Happy Trashnukkah, Merry Trashmas and a Recycled Festivus for the Rest of Us!  This year, the eight days of Chanukkah coincide with the winter solstice and Christmas, so we are presenting a combo of trashtastic hanukiahs and X-mas trees all in one post:

Menorah made in Haiti out of recycled 55-gallon oil drums

Christmas tree made from plastic bottles in Haifa via Green Prophet

Go green with a recycled Sprite bottle X-mas tree in Lithuania

Make a glass bottle menorah with instructions on ReadyMade

Hubcap X-mas tree from Unconsumption

Peznorah (and 7 more awesome menorahs) found on geek.com

post consumer recycled plastic Christmas tree via Tikkun, more pics at ElvertBarnes

clothespins hanukiah by Gad Charny, more sustainable menorahs on Green Prophet

There are even more images of creative reuse Christmas trees on Unconsumption, Crisp Green, and Mother Nature Network.  We tried to find an image of the sun made from recycled materials, but couldn’t find one, so Ruby vows to create a sun for the NEXT upcycle solstice celebration.  Happy, Trash-free Holidays from Olympia Dumpster Divers!

This is a hanukiah that Ruby Re-Usable made for the" Twelve Days of Christmas" windows display in downtown Olympia in 2002. These festive, zoftiig ladies are made out of blue and white Hanukkah detritus, with a white candle on each of their heads.

 

Cigar Box Ukuleles

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Second-hand Sid and Ruby Re-Usable recently visited Will Eikleberry, a local Olympia luthier who also makes guitars and ukuleles out of cigar boxes.  Ruby has just started to learn how to play the ukulele and wanted a used instrument, so buying a ukulele that was made from recycled materials seemed like the perfect solution.  It sounds and feels great; now she needs to find (or make) a case from recycled materials to carry it in!

Read more about Will’s ukes in the Weekly Volcano

Learn how to make your own cigar box ukulele HERE

One Man’s Trash: A History of the Cigar Box Guitar                                               William J Jehle, detritomusicologist and cigar box guitar historian, has collected fragments of these forgotten instruments to create the first written history dedicated to these humble instruments

Check out the cigar box guitar documentary: Songs Inside the Box

Ruby and Sid have joined Oly-A UP, a ukulele players group in Olympia, WA

 

Day of the Dead skeletons from recycled materials

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Sometimes we here at Olympia Dumpster Divers are suckers for the kitschy, arts & craftsy stuff, especially around Halloween.  These skeletons made from reused plastic jugs are just that kind of fun holiday decoration that we get a kick out of, even though we personally have never made one, since we don’t use plastic jugs.  But if you DO happen to have a bunch of plastic jugs (we won’t judge), you can see how to make them HERE and HERE (and/or watch a video about it HERE).

Day of the Dead recycled materials skeleton by Ruby

Of course, we are also fascinated by Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead skeletons.  One year, Ruby made some Day-of-the-Dead-inspired figures with high school students, using white coat hanger wire, cardboard tubes, popsicle sticks, thrift store styrofoam skulls, cotton batting, and fabric scraps.

This year, she is teaching several workshops on how to make skeleton figurines out of cardboard (like the white cardboard that sometimes comes in clothing packages), chenille stems (purchased new at the craft store), fabric scraps, and other stuff (including those paper parasols that that you get in drinks).  If you are in the Olympia area, check it out HERE (more pics HERE)

Day of the Dead figurines by Ruby Re-Usable

Feliz Halloween!

 

RecyclArt in Issaquah

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Marita Dingus with one of her recycle art fences at the artEAST RecyclArt Show opening

So this past Friday, Olympia Dumpster Divers Ruby Re-Usable and Pat Tassoni ventured up to Issaquah, WA for the opening of artEAST’s juried RecyclArt Show, where we met up with fellow artists who work with the materials most people either throw away or put into their recycling bins.  Our friends Jenny Fillius and Kelly Lyles were there, along with many of the participating artists, including Nia Michaels, Tom Anderson, Esther Ervin, Vblast, Suzanne Tidwell,  and Marita Dingus (who, as a guest juror, was invited to display a piece in the show).  The variety of materials and techniques used to create the sculptures, wall hangings, and other objects on exhibit was, as usual for this genre, intriguing, inventive, humorous and fun.  View pics from the opening HERE

Figure drawings from torn paper bags at artEAST RecyclArt show (artists unknown)

We also took a few pics of the Proletkult group show at the Blowing Sands Gallery in Ballard, (which ends October 5, 2011) and the pics from last month’s Olympia Film Society’s What You Got Zombie Trash Fashion Show at the Capitol Theater are HERE

MEANWHILE, our man in Armenia, Bil Fleming, is blogging about his dumpster diving adventures while being an artist-in-residence there: Bilinarmenia

Zombie M models a Macy's plastic shopping bag (plastic is the un-dead of detritus ... )