Beacon Open Studios

Enjoyed showing print work related to the Squanderless project this past Sunday as part of the Beacon Open Studios event. Image above captures one wall of drawings along with text I provided for context and reflection. Below are those texts:

Text 1: A quote from William Rathje’s book, “Rubbish: The Archaeology of Garbage”:

Well-designed and managed landfills seem to be far more apt to preserve their contents for posterity than to transform them into humus or mulch. They are not vast composters; rather, they are vast mummifiers…Pages from coloring books were still clearly that, onion parings were onion parings, carrot tops were carrot tops…Whole hot dogs have been found in the course of every excavation the Garbage Project has done, some of them in strata suggesting an age upwards of several decades.

Text 2: Series title/description:

Future fossils from the largest manmade structures on Earth

Australian archaeologist Rowland Fletcher calls the largest monuments that any society builds for itself MVSes—Monstrous Visual Symbols. Fletcher has observed that as a society’s motivating ideals change, so do its MVSes—temples and cathedrals become bridges and skyscrapers. Landfills, such as Fresh Kills, are a potent reminder that the largest MVSes in American society today are its garbage repositories.

1. Aunt B’s cupcake foils: clay print, laser cut paper
2. Spiral binder fragments: clay print, laser cut paper
3. Spiral binder fragments 2: laser cut paper
4. Meatloaf foil: laser cut paper

See more detailed images here.