Even a single piece of trash has ramifications, whether the careless litterer thinks so or not. An environment cluttered with foreign objects, be they single-use plastics or tin cans, isn’t in its purest state. But two Guadalupe nonprofits are providing a home for an exhibit that makes use of such discarded waste, transforming it into something beautiful and new while spurring dialogue about garbage, the environment, and what we can do about the problems that arise when the two mix.
The idea was first conceived by Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center Executive Director Doug Jenzen, who saw a similar use of found objects during a visit to Monterey.
“When I came on at the Dunes Center, I thought it would be a great project that would be applicable to the area,” he said. “I liked the idea of getting people to pick up litter and repurpose it into something pretty.”
The initial idea was for the exhibit to include artwork that included trash picked up off the Guadalupe-Nipomo dunes, but the expanse widened to include assemblage art from artists as far away as Ojai and Paso Robles. This allowed for a much more diverse collection of art—so much, in fact, that the Dunes Center’s next-door neighbor, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts and Education Center, is housing parts of the exhibit as well.
“We collaborate all the time,” Jenzen said. “We see each other every day when we are exchanging mail, so the environment is very conducive to collaborating.”
The exhibit, titled “reTHINK,” is an assemblage art show in which the found objects must be typical trash, litter, or junk. Assemblage art is a multimedia form of 3D visual art that includes aspects of sculpture, painting, collage, and other styles. It’s known for transforming mundane objects into cohesive works of art.
“When we had our opening, people weren’t expecting art that was created with trash to come out looking so beautiful,” Jenzen said. “Frankly, I was shocked as well. I’m not the artistic type, so if I were to create something, it would look like a bunch of things jumbled together, but this art is very aesthetically pleasing.”
From a robot-looking sculpture made out of scrap yard parts, complete with solar-powered glowing eyes, to simple concept ideas like Rock, paper, scissors, which includes exactly what it says, each work of art becomes a standalone statement about the usefulness of objects.
One Santa Barbara-based assemblage artist, Mary Price, contributed much to the show. She’s shared much of her own work as well as the work of her friends from her own private collection.
“A found object is something that, gosh, you come across in the street, or in a thrift store, or in the trash, or on the beach,” she said. “It’s up to the artist to find what is appealing and what the meaning is and incorporate it into their artwork.”
Price is the art gallery director for the Art from Scrap gallery, an Explore Ecology program based in Santa Barbara that began in 1990 with the mission of turning scrap materials into art as a way of spurring dialogue about ecology and environmental education.
“Sometimes what you create is so transformative that you can’t tell that it is junk,” Price said. “I wanted to use things to maybe get people to use junk in their own creations.
“One of the things I really enjoy here is the inspiration I get from other artists, and I wanted to share that with people,” she added.
Price also hopes to open discussions and thought among viewers. Like the mission of Art from Scrap and the “reTHINK” exhibit, creating art out of something thoughtlessly discarded may inspire the viewer to behave differently with his or her own litter, creativity, or both.
“It’s very important to be aware of the things that are going on around us,” Price said. “I am appalled by the waste of things. I think there’s something really wrong with our culture in that we constantly, constantly buy new stuff all the time because it is so cheap, and then we just stack it up.”
In other words, low prices carry a high cost, often leading to foreign objects and toxins clogging fragile ecosystems. The Guadalupe-Nipomo dunes and river estuary is a protected habitat, but many pounds of trash and litter are removed every year as part of volunteer cleanups.
One local group, the Orcutt Children’s Arts Foundation, got involved with a cleanup at Oso Flaco Lake. The kids in the program ended up using discarded charcoal collected to create drawings inspired by the effort, Jenzen explained.
When he first started as executive director of the Dunes Center, he recognized that artistic programs such as “reTHINK” were great opportunities to reach larger audiences in the environmental dialogue.
“Not everyone is interested in science,” he said, “so there is a way to talk about restoration and conservation in an artistic way. It’s an interdisciplinary approach to enriching and preserving our local natural heritage.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne hopes everyone litters less. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 8-15, 2013.