31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Recology art show brings the dump into the gallery
Part of living in San Francisco is having a special awareness of our trash.
In our environmentally-minded region, it has long been gospel to recycle, compost and be conscious of how our consumption habits create waste. Trash also intersects with our culture, so to speak. The Bay Area has a rich history of assemblage art (when artists use found or scavenged objects to create new works), and we are the home of legendary reuse nonprofit Scrap, co-founded by artist Ruth Asawa and arts administrator Anne Marie Thielen.
'I feel so fortunate to be out there at the dump,' said Deborah Munk, manager of Recology's Artist in Residence program and its Environmental Learning Center.
For the past 35 years, the program has hosted more than 190 professional artists and 60 student artists in disciplines including painting, sculpture, video, photography, installation and performance. Recology is celebrating that milestone with an exhibition, 'Art/Education/Community: 35 Years of Recology AIR' at the Minnesota Street Project. On view through Aug. 26 in the building's atrium, Gallery 107 and media room, the exhibition includes a sampling of both past artists-in-residence and student artists.
Part of Recology's Sustainability Education program, the artist residency was founded by artist and activist Jo Hanson in 1990. The four-month period gives artists studio space at the company's Crocker Industrial Zone transfer center as well as a stipend and (most excitingly) access to materials recovered from the Public Reuse and Recycling Area. Artists are encouraged to be innovative and to make use of what's available onsite as they create new work for an exhibition and public program at the end of their terms. The artists and their work are part of the educational tours and workshops that happen on-site, and the Captain Planeteer in me can't help but get excited about any program that combines sustainability with creativity.
Anyone expecting to see a very literal show of reused garbage is mistaken. While transformation and repurposing of materials is certainly a significant theme in the exhibition, there's a subtlety to much of the work.
Kathy Aoki's 2020 'Disgraced Patriarchal Monuments: Mansplaining' — constructed from foam, signage board and a reused mannequin head depicting a bust of man in a suit — is as funny as her ongoing 'Koons Ruins' series. It's crafted so precisely you might not have guessed the materials were recycled. Michelle 'Meng' Nuguyen's 2024 sculptures depicting a Vietnamese gas pump, travel agency advertisement and a street sign are made from found wood, house paint and discarded yard items. Each piece is impeccably constructed and pristinely painted, like pop art objects.
Munk said that the materials people dump and donate remain relatively consistent (paint, wood and paper are all in ready supply) but that often, artists find things that inspire their work. Construction strand board and plywood that were dumped became the basis of former staff member Victor Yañez-Lazcano's 2019 wall-mounted sculpture 'Trill,' which shows the different colored layers of the edge of materials like a mille-feuille pastry. And sometimes, as if by magic, materials will present themselves just when an artist needs them, like the costume jewelry Laura Roth Hope found to wrap around the skeleton she carved out of found plywood in her 2025 work 'Body of Land, Body of Water III.'
Jamil Hellu's 2014 photo 'Splattered' shows his body covered in discarded paint as part of a community performance. The image exudes beauty and violence. Likewise, there's something both optimistic and melancholy about Kija Lucas' 2021 photo 'Untitled (5 Brooms and a Rake)' showing the objects in a darkly lit still life while a gold cloth glimmers behind them like a religious icon.
Upon entering and exiting, you pass Torreya Cummings' 2023 installation 'Et in Arcadia Ego' in which an island made from fencing, plastic flora and fauna, inflatable palm trees and a shell chandelier hang upside down over a mirrored platform. When you see the plastic skeleton reflected back in the mirrors, it reads as a vital critique of mankind's continued destruction of paradise.
'I think the theme that runs through all the work here is about building community, honoring people, honoring our legacy, honoring objects,' said Munk. 'Our artists are not necessarily environmentalists, but when they leave, it changes them and their work practice.'
The story of our city and the era we live in can be found in what people throw away. A show like this also speaks to ways we can rethink the problem of waste.
'We've all heard 'Recycle, reuse,'' said Munk. 'This is just a different way to reach people.'
