Making something out of what gets left behind
Paper, fabric, wood
About making art at the dump
From July 2022 through January, I participated in the GLEAN residency in Portland, scavenging materials from the city dump to create a body of work and culminating exhibition that took place at the Parallax Art Center in February 2023. In addition to the ecological drive behind this project, the experience necessitated trusting the process.
This wasn’t my first hangout with a trash mountain, yet I was a completely different person this time. In 2010, I was an artist-in-residence at the dump in San Francisco with the beloved Recology AIR Program, who brought their visionary model to Portland about a decade ago. Give artists access to materials at the dump, and challenge them to make work entirely from what they find. Back then, I had no kid and few time constraints. I fondly remember digging though garbage all day and hopping out of my coveralls to go to an opening in the evening. Would I be up for the challenge now that I am less free?
There was a considerable adjustment period in learning the ropes at the transfer station, but a rhythm soon set in. I found that my mind could find a quiet space, one I hadn’t had access to for some time, amidst the noise of the heavy equipment pushing trash into looming piles. I had to be alert to not get slammed by a front loader, but also present with myself, my thoughts, and the materials. I could not hide from myself or the present moment. I started looking closely and holding objects, trying to intuit what they wanted to be.
The overwhelming, melancholy environment and the magnitude of waste became more understandable as a processing of the pandemic years. I thought about processing, maintenance of life through all the mundane tasks we must do to keep up the business of living. How the essential yet often underappreciated work of women holds systems together. The legacy of artists Jo Hansen’s and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s performance, activism, and service was resonant in my days.
I was drawn to the tactility of everyday, humble materials like paper, string, and fabric. I considered traditional “women’s work” and embracing craft methods in my painting. I value care work and find a common thread in tending to my domestic and studio spaces, joining materials together, stitching, making marks on a page. Ideas can travel from one space to another, feeling can take visual form, labor can be honored and made manifest through the small gestures that accrue into the larger whole, into a painting, and even a life.
The resulting body of work is a collection of ghosts, versions of myself and others, time past. Echoes, vibrations, and entanglements.
What is lasting or meant to last?
Looking at, listening to, and reading
This video of Torkwase Dyson making a print at Paulson Fontaine is mesmerizing.
My website is updated with new work.
My work in Reclaimed: The Art of Recology is on a national tour through 2026, coming in late September to the Stauth Memorial Museum in Kansas.
I’ll be in NY in October. What should I see and do?
You can read my last post, An actual newsletter, here.
Thank YOU for being here -
Val
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⋰ Email : val@valbritton.com (or respond to this email)