Art & Ecology:
Photoessays: Art and the Earth
Earthly Matters
The All American Art of Conspicuous Recycling
by Suzanne Seriff, Ph.D.
"It's just castoff stuff people throw away. Like people who've been cast off, and everybody thinks they're worth nothing. I've been there. Beat up, broken, down at the bottom. But I had this dream in my head, and that made me more than a piece of junk."
- Charlie Lucas, scrap figure maker, Alabama, U.S.A.
"Anyone can do anything with a million dollars--look at Disney. But it takes more than money to make something out of nothing, and look at the fun I have doing it."
Tressa "Grandma" Prisbrey, bottle village maker, Simi, - California.
Even when reusing household throwaways is not an economic necessity, for most recycling artisans it remains a challenge and an artistic adventure. This is the guiding principle for many folks in America--the self-proclaimed hub of the consumer world --where we find a bold and decidedly cross-cultural display of conspicuous recycling.
For some Americans, like the mid-Western welders of farm tool furniture and wagon-wheel fences, this display might be a proud and public statement of occupational or personal virtuosity, wit, and identity. Once a Kansas farmer, Wild Willie continues to collect old farm equipment from friends and neighbors to make the menagerie of cowboy scrap figures and other characters that populate his yard in Wimberly, Texas, and are sold to passersby (photo). Grace and Clarence Woolsey of Lincoln, Iowa, started with a gallon container of old bottle caps, a snowy evening, and the question, "What could we make out of the caps?" to create what they called Caparena--caps in an arena--an environment of more than 400 figures, animals, houses and vehicles.
For other Americans, their scrap environments and objects might be an ironic commentary on American "throwaways" and their transformations. African-American scrap figure maker Charlie Lucas exemplifies such an association when he says of his recycled "tin men," " I too have been cast off, beat up, broken, down at the bottom." Another group of individuals who have frequently been forced to re-use the materials at hand because of adverse conditions are the inmates in our nation's prisons. Newspapers, cigarette and gum-wrappers, tin-foil, and toilet paper are readily accessible to them, and they've made use of such throwaways to make collectible objects such as this grizzly bear made from burned and rolled toilet paper.
Whatever leads them to the scrap heap, each of these recyclers takes the site of America--its symbols, colors, people, and products--as a reference point for his or her conspicuous display of recycled arts in the home, the yard, the street, the shop, or the alleyway.
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