The Thoreau Center for Sustainability, San Francisco, CA 2015
Make Art Not Landfill
The 25th Anniversary Exhibition of the Artist in Residency Program
dateline: (08-12-2011) 4:40 PDT Little Hollywood, CA. (AP)--
chalk and pastel on paper
48 x 33 inches
collection: Recology San Francisco
Over the past twenty-five years, more than 150 Bay Area Artists have worked at Recology San Francisco making art from things that people have thrown away. While making art from scavenged or recycled materials is certainly not new, having access to a city's waste stream is unique. The Recology Artists Program is the first program of it's kind in the country and was developed when curbside recycling was established in San Francisco. Conceived by artist and activist Jo Hanson, the program was the most innovative component of an education initiative to encourage people to recycle. Now, twenty-five years later, the program has garnered international attention, and has grown to include an Environmental Learning Center, an extensive public tour program, a three-acre sculpture garden. and off-site exhibitions.
It is fitting to hold this exhibition at the Thoreau Center for Sustainability, as the Recology Artist in Residency Program shares the Thoreau Center's dedication to the preservation of the enviornment and creation of a sustainable world.
Recology San Francisco
Donna Anderson Kam uses contemporary newspaper stories as starting points to explore social issues. She begins by photographing young actors as they perform the stories, then uses the resulting images to create collage studies that she eventually reinterprets in pastels. The final drawings are finely rendered scenes in soft tones that can be as large as four by six feet and which are left intentionally ambiguous. During her residency, Anderson Kam used the Recology San Francisco facility as back drop for her actors and recognizable areas—the sculpture garden, hillside, and Public Disposal Building— are all visible in her final works. She utilized materials she had not worked with before, including computer paper and advertising signage, and as pastels have been harder to come by, is working with varieties of chalks and crayons. Expanding on the narrative nature of her work, she presented drawings in free-standing circular formats, enabling the viewer to walk around a piece, entering and exiting at any place, to create their own beginnings and ends.
Excerpt from: Art at the Dump, The Artist in Residence Program and Environmental Learning Center at Recology
Editor: Sharon Spain