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When you set out your bright blue recycling
bucket on alternating weeks, did you ever think about the cool
stuff you could make out of its contents? Toys? Games? Robots?
Or useful stuff, like slingshots, watering cans and musical instruments?
A new exhibition at the Noyes Museum presents over 250 examples
of how one could go about this by 50 artists from all over North
America. The guest curator of the show and principle participating
artist, Bobby Hansson (artist, veteran dumpster diver and author
of The Fine Art of the Tin Can) has made a career out of postulating
new, ingenious and colorful uses for the copious refuse generated
by our modern lifestyle.
Bobby Hansson is himself a colorful character.
I first saw him in action a couple of summers ago at a workshop
in Northern Canada. There he recruited a ragtag marching band
of artists and woodworkers to play taps on improvised instruments
during a collaborative performance project. In a former life he
was a photographer in New York, as well as (legend has it) a stunt
man and a bodyguard for a team of female wrestlers. Now he lives
quietly enough in rural Maryland, works in his studio and operates
Leaping Beaver Tinker Shop. He claims to always wear a recycled
tie to work (purchased from a thrift store) and to "never,
ever wear two plaids together, always three or more at a time."
Hansson began working with recycled materials
in 1955 and has since spread the good word through his popular
workshops all over the country. He's especially well known for
his imaginatively constructed furniture, such as Throne
for the Snow Queen, included in
this exhibition. This chair is made from an upright sled on a
base of two shortened skis and has a seat made of a sturdy metal
snow shovel - that unexpectedly mimics the rounded contours of
a seated derriere. Nearby, Philadelphia artist Randall Cleaver
takes a leap through time in
Happy Feat by transforming an old
Victrola record player into a funky pinball machine that includes
a tongue-in-cheek homage to Hansson - a four-inch guy in a polka-dot
suit who wildly dances on the half-hour. Another artist, Boris
Bally of Providence, RI, converted "once-legible traffic
signage" into a beautiful set of weights, in Rep
Forms, by sandwiching layers of
signs and turning them on a lathe.
The show includes many other kinds of
practical items. There's a selection of watering cans of all sizes
and shapes, from a tiny one with an absurdly long spout made out
of tomato paste cans to a jumbo one made out a one-gallon can
of Kikkoman soy sauce. A hand fan, resourcefully fashioned out
of discarded Rolling Rock cans, was made by the Lovely Loney Metal
Works of Pittsburgh. One wall in the gallery is hung with an impressive
assortment of slingshots from Hansson's personal collection, most
by anonymous creators. Included is a classic forked-wood example,
while others are made from a shovel handle, two pairs of welded
together pliers and a broken hand drill with two drill bits welded
on. Each one of these quirky objects seems to have had an interesting
past life, and now, thanks to someone's imagination, they have
a new lease on life.
But one of Hansson's most original concepts
is a junkyard orchestra that, he says, was inspired at first by
the Juilliard String Quartet, and later, by experimental musicians
like Harry Partch. The surreal combination of ordinary objects
in the musical instruments is exquisite, and they're hung on the
walls in groups, like an orchestra. There are woodwind, horn,
string and percussion instruments, and many are based on corny
puns. Some have simple construction, such as Hansson's Shoe
Horn, made from a red plastic toy
boot fitted with a turkey baster and a straw. Others, like New
York artist Charles Orlando's Ham
Can Instrument, are more complex
and make use of recycled parts from instruments combined with
tin cans or other objects. Maggie Creshkoff, a frequent collaborator
of Hansson's from Port Deposit, Maryland, created a tin-can percussion
instrument, Candemonium, that was compelling on several
levels: visually, musically and because of the mouthwatering original
contents of the cans - Italian tomatoes, extra strong whole grain
mustard from France and Royal Dansk cookies.
Another frequent collaborator, Brooklyn
artist-musician Jody Kruskal, is the founder of "The Public
Works Orchestra" and has instruments in the exhibition that
reveal a diligent search for interesting sound. One of these,
Glass Wheel, consists of a small bicycle tire on a stand
fitted around its circumference with glass bottles cut off to
different lengths. As the wheel spins, the bottles are repetitively
tapped by small wooden balls on wires, and they emit a lovely,
ethereal tune. Meanwhile, with the turn of a crank, Cranky
#1 humorously clunks out a tune with cans and wood scraps.
Visitors to the show on its opening day were treated to impromptu
performances and at one point Kruskal outfitted himself as a one-man
band. He played a mesmerizing solo with a series of raucous mouth
instruments (a kazoo, crow's call and corrugated tube whistle)
while gently strumming a celestial kora made of a broom handle,
tin-can, harpsichord tuning pegs and about a dozen strands of
fishing line.
Later the full band played some spirited
American hillbilly and jug band tunes. Hansson performed on a
squealy wind instrument and Maggie Creshkoff piped a tiny flute
made from a tomato paste can, while Barbara Benary played "a
genuine tin-can violin" and Jody Kruskal plucked
Canjo, made of a large can that
originally contained chicken livers. The band needed a bass player,
so they recruited the sound guy who turned out to be a natural,
John Rosenberg. He played Hansson's Lawn
Mower Bass, which was made from
a lawnmower handle and a five-gallon maple syrup bucket and fitted
with a single string. Visitors to the show added their musical
touches by tapping on a tin-can drum or ringing Benary's Gamelon,
a heavy gong made from the lid of a 55-gallon drum. Not surprisingly
several audience members, my six-year-old son among them, had
to be pried off the instruments when it was time to go. After
this experience, we're all looking at our recycling buckets in
a new way.
-Susan
Hagen, February 2002
for
more information on this exhibition,
click here |
