Waste Diversions

With intriguing pieces of art across the walls of a narrow walkway that lead to a room where a band was setting up, art viewers started to make their way into Materials for the Arts’ gallery space for it’s latest exhibition, WasteDiversions: Sculpture and Collage from New York’s Waste Stream, a little after 6:00 PM on Thursday, March 29.
 
Materials for the Arts (MFTA), founded in 1978 and located in the forthcoming art neighborhood of Long Island City, is a local art center that implements a recycle and reuse ideology by gathering an extensive collection of unused materials, ranging from buttons to old computers donated by businesses and individuals alike. MFTA then distributes the donations to non-profit organizations with arts programming in NYC, City Agencies, or NYC public schools in exchange for a “Thank You” letter to the donor of the materials they obtained. MFTA also organizes open studio programs, or “monthly workshops that invite the public to engage in collaborative projects with MFTA teaching artists.”
 
WasteDiversions: Sculpture and Collage from New York’s Waste Stream is an exhibition that successfully uses found items in an effort to create something entirely altered, almost as if to find “the beauty in dirt.” The exhibition combines work by artists from recipient groups Culture Push and Vaudeville Park, along with works created by participants of the open studio programs and MFTA regulars.
 
The immediate eye-catchers are the tiny, jovial paper/found item sculptures that are reminiscent of the characters in the novel and film, “The Brave Little Toaster.” Sabu, the artist and MFTA volunteer behind these quirky characters, assembles them with an assortment of scraps left behind by after-school group workshops.  Sabu’s comical sensibility shines through in each one of his pieces.
 
         
Quilt, a collaborative piece led by Michael DePietro and Rachel Schragis of Culture Push, an MFTA recipient, and created by the participants, displays very subjective viewpoints on the duality between society and fashion. The quilt lays out a flowchart with boxes that resemble thought-bubbles. Within the thought-bubbles, you see the different approaches to the topic, such as: Body Empowerment, Identity Politics, Solidarity, Is Our Choice Real?, and Give In, Too Much.
 
As you make your way through the gallery space, you pass a couple of full-size sculptures and canvas collages made out of materials ranging from newspaper, old fabrics, fake chocolate coins, a milk jug, pink duct tape, a fedora, a toy truck, an old board game, a snowboard, and cutouts of Chipotle aluminum foil wraps; each one of the pieces creating a whimsical environment of color and tiny details.
 
Artist Chase Carlisle composes a triptych of collages made entirely out of carefully cut out images. Carlisle’s first collage uses small, circular comic book cut outs to create a logical flow of color from every point of the canvas, while his second collage features an interesting array of images; Robocop with tentacles and a slightly ajar, red-lipped mouth where his torso would be, and multiple fists on either side of his torso that seem to be juggling small moons that turn into skull heads at the peak. His third collage, much smaller in size compared to the first two, is a composite of different landscapes in various color tones that seem to create one coherent landscape of trees, a river, cliff, clouds and greenery.
 
The final piece before leading into the reception is Static Noise, a mixed-media installation by Kim Gee and Kevin Stirnweis. Making use of CRT televisions donated by artist Kevin Cooley, who used them in his own public art project, Remote Nation, Gee and Stirnweis initiate an interesting space of static background televisions with hand painted images/words, color painted televisions, and a television with the screen removed and replaced with multiple, color balloons accompanied by three found audio tracks. The static and single image on the screen provokes the viewer into entering a unique chasm of creativity, guided by the faint hum of the static.
 
As part of the opening reception, Ian M. Couletti, a participating artist whose work comprised of three film-noir inspired collage posters and founder of Vaudeville Park, a multidisciplinary performance space, performed a live score to a rare and unnamed, 16mm noir film. Using nothing but a white sheet as a “screen,” an old projector, and his instruments that varied from a synthesizer to a violin to a sitar, Couletti put on a dark and cryptic performance, parallel to the film, with his fellow band mate and trumpet/saxophone player, Daniel Carter.
 
The exhibition did just as it intended, which was to “demonstrate how overlooked and unneeded objects from the waste stream can inspire the City’s artists and makers.” With art ranging from playful sculptures to conceptual art to performance art, WasteDiversions provided viewers with a full art experience while demonstrating that out of “bare bones,” creativity is most definitely bred.