Turning garbage into recycled treasures

May 26, 2004
By Douglas Fischer, STAFF WRITER
insideBayArea.com

SAN FRANCISCO - The slamming and the banging and the scraping and the sorting is omnipresent. The stench can be overpowering. The junk - endless piles of discarded households, tired sofas, un-treasured knickknacks, cardboard, plasterboard, plywood, plastic, foam - never stops.

Henri Marie-Rose wields a metal sculpture for the San Francisco Dump's artist-in-residence program

For 16 years, the city's garbage hauler has sponsored an "artist in residence" at the San Francisco Recycling & Disposal, Inc. Artists get free range of the city's transfer station and are asked only to hold a show in return.

Two are doing so this weekend - Henri Marie-Rose with his modernist steel and wood sculptures, and Bessie Kunath with her eclectic found-art pieces. Shows are tonight from 5 to 9 p.m. and Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m. at the landfill site.

"Everything you see can tell you what to do next," Marie-Rose said last week before firing up his welding torch to put the finishing touch on various pieces. "They inspire you. You may start once with an idea, then suddenly something moves you to the right, to the left.

"The material is teaching or telling you what to do. It is almost like a conversation, where we are on equal footing."

The program started in 1990 when an artist asked for access to Norcal Waste System's transfer site as a source for materials. The company feared chaos if it opened its doors to any comers but saw a way to promote art and push recycling at the same time.

"It was a natural marriage," said company spokesman Robert Reed. "We're always trying to find different ways to stimulate people to think about recycling."

This qualifies. No question.

A full-size Hummer made entirely of discarded white foam. Minimalist sculptures carved from sheets of plywood glued into blocks. Platters and bowls made from shattered Muni bus shelter windows.

Kunath placed an ancient plaster chicken of unknown vintage in a shadow box made of discarded wood and a gilt frame discarded because the glass was cracked. Marie-Rose has spent a month cutting and welding discarded rebar, metal plates and ribbon into abstract, airy, soaring sculptures - "The Cathedral" earned its title only after Marie-Rose saw a circular rose window among the flying buttresses.

To the artist arriving for a typical three- or four-month fellowship, the introduction to the vast complex across Highway 101 from Candlestick Point can be rude.

Marie-Rose, who is 82 and showed at the DeYoung Museum in 1960, held the advantage here: He's served as the program's informal assistant-in-residence for years. This is his second residency.

Kunath just graduated from art school.

"It's really overwhelming," she said. "It's hard to start. Even when you go in with a certain style and a certain medium, you end up doing something different because you're subject to the stuff that you find."

But the program has lost its one-of-a-kind status.

Last month the Saint Vincent de Paul Society launched its own residency program, giving artists free range of its mammoth collection facility near Oakland International Airport. Daphne Ruff of Oakland and Sandy Drobny of El Cerrito, who both had residencies at the San Francisco site, are the first artists.

"We're both very textile-oriented people," Drobny said. "It's very intoxicating in a way - it's a stream of materials."

Having spent three months at the dump in 2004, Drobny thought the quality of the goods discarded as useless or excess would not surprise her. It still does.

The St. Vincent de Paul residency has an additional requirement that artists develop a product that women in the society's rehabilitation programs can make. The item must be easily manufactured from items that consistently appear in the donation bin.

Even with that element, however, neither program will ever be a significant factor in the state's recycling efforts.

San Francisco throws away 2,300 tons of garbage per day. Another 600 tons of bottles, cans, papers and plastics gets recycled. The Saint Vincent de Paul Society collects untold tons of discarded clothing a day in the Bay Area. Californians last year alone bought 20 billion recyclable cans and bottles.

So for the artists, it's all about making one gesture.

"We get overloaded. Our brains just start to spin," said San Francisco artist Sarah Barsness, who finished her residency at the dump in April.

"By volume I used one-fiftieth of what I picked up. And what I picked up was just a tiny, tiny sliver," she added. "It's about all of us making a small gesture - (such as) not using a disposable coffee cup."

The gallery at the San Francisco Recycling and Disposal Inc. is at 503 Tunnel Ave., San Francisco. More information about the artist-in-residence program and this weekend's shows can be found online at http://www.sunsetscavenger.com/AIR/.