Company Trash, Classroom Treasures

  • Anita Gardner (right) and Shirley Ellington of the Discovery Center of Cleveland rummage through boxes at ZeroLandfill. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Furniture stores and architectural
firms get a lot of samples – of fabric,
tiles, and carpet. Those samples can
pile up. Usually, they get thrown in
the trash. But, in some cities, they
are starting to make unused design
samples available to artists and art
teachers. Julie Grant has more:

Transcript

Furniture stores and architectural
firms get a lot of samples – of fabric,
tiles, and carpet. Those samples can
pile up. Usually, they get thrown in
the trash. But, in some cities, they
are starting to make unused design
samples available to artists and art
teachers. Julie Grant has more:

(sound of Anita looking thru boxes)

Anita Gardner is rummaging through boxes of old tile samples. They’re still attached to those three-fold sample books you’d see at a design store. But she’s imagining what else the kids at her community center might make with them.

“You have to see it first, sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t come. It comes later and then you go, ‘we can do this and we can do that.’”

Gardner is at a special event called ZeroLandfill. Furniture stores, architects and design centers can drop off unwanted materials, and people like Gardner can take whatever they want – for free.

“This has been a godsend to us, because we really don’t have a lot of money to spend on arts and crafts.”

Last year, she found a lot of unused fabric – so she taught the kids at her center to sew quilts.

“And a lot of children in our community have never even threaded a needle. Now they’re learning to use sewing machines. They’re learning to piece all types of fabric together. They’re learning patterns and designs. They have no idea, they’re actually learning math.”

And in inner city neighborhoods, where kids can go to bed cold in the winter, Gardner is especially pleased that she’s started a quilt-making trend. It also warms the hearts of the folks who organize ZeroLandfill.

David Fox helps to run these events in Cleveland.

“A lot of samples end up just being discontinued and then, where does this all go? And it ends up being thrown out a lot of time. Or – they just have so much stuff they just keep hoarding and hoarding and hoarding.”

About five years ago, some folks at architecture and design firms around Cleveland, as well as a carpet company, all started talking about what to do with their unwanted material. They were spending a lot of money to send it to the landfill. So they held a one-day drop-off for companies to recycle it.

Fox says they soon realized their trash might be treasure to artists and art teachers.

“It was a program that started as a one-day thing. Firms were able to come and drop stuff off. But it has turned into a yearly process and now it’s even gone to other cities.”

Fox says they’ve already saved more than 100 tons of material from going to the landfill.

Arts and crafts teacher Anita Gardner says it’s also provided innumerable lessons for kids and teenagers at her community center.

“They see now that anything can be art. Anything can be a craft. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot to be beautiful.”

ZeroLandfill has been training architecture and design firms how to organize these events regularly. They’re now held annually in cities around Ohio – and new ZeroLandfills are being held in Minneapolis, Louisville and Boston this year.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Wanted: Affordable Art Space

  • Back in 2000, Laura Weathered and fellow artists were drafting what their artist community would look like. (Photo by Lester Graham)

When artists make a check-list for the ideal place to live – they add things the average family
might not, like plenty of work space and being close to other artists and galleries. Big cities
usually offer all the things on that list – but there’s a problem. Big-city real estate prices have a
habit of rising quickly – and pricing artists out. Shawn Allee found artists who’ve tried to stay
put:

Transcript

When artists make a check-list for the ideal place to live – they add things the average family
might not, like plenty of work space and being close to other artists and galleries. Big cities
usually offer all the things on that list – but there’s a problem. Big-city real estate prices have a
habit of rising quickly – and pricing artists out. Shawn Allee found artists who’ve tried to stay
put:

Laura Weathered began her career in painting in Los Angeles.

It was tough enough finding her muse – but it was also tough finding places to live that stayed
affordable.

“This kind of history of settling into a space and then the neighborhood going through
gentrification was chasing me all over L.A.”

Fed up, Weathered left for Chicago.

Before long, she found some Chicago artists had the same problem – rents and home prices just
weren’t stable.

Weathered and fellow artists got tired of toughing it – so about thirty of them put their heads
together and looked into buying property – to live in, to work – and maybe share with artist
groups, too.

“And someone’s comment was, You know, this is going to cost more than a million
dollars – who’s going to rent a bunch of flaky artists a million dollars?”

But then they did some back-of the napkin kinda math.

“We had a everyone go around the room and, What are you paying for rent? And that
was the Aha moment – collectively we could afford much more than a million dollars,
because that’s what we’d been paying all along.”

It took almost ten years to dig up funding and expertise, but eventually – they transformed a
former metal-stamping factory into artist housing, studio and office space.

People have been living in the artists’ community for five years now.

When you walk around, you see paintings in some loft windows and sculptures near the front
step.

Weathered shows off some shared gallery space.

“So, this is really important. You can bring test audiences in and see how it plays and get
feedback and the like without taking huge risks.”

All this is great – but the big idea was to make the space stay affordable for artists and artist
groups. So far, it’s worked.

“We can stay here a long time.”

This is Denise Zaccardi.

Zaccardi runs the Community TV Network. It has offices at the Bloomingdale Arts Building.

The network teaches low-income teens how to produce news, TV and documentaries. Zaccardi
says arts organizations like hers can benefit from this stability.

“Kids can tell their brothers and sisters down the line we’re here – we’re not moving
every three years, which is a common thing for people who rent, especially for artists.”

So, sounds like everything is an artist’ dream, right?

Well, like in other condo-associations, members have fought over repair costs. And artists who
own their units can only sell them to other artists. Plus, if they do sell … their profits are
capped. That’s made the units much lower in value compared to their neighbors’.

Laura Weathered says there’ve been second thoughts.

“I think some people are saying, ‘Did I agree to this too quickly?’ because it’s restrictive,
but the agreement originally was that we wanted an artist community and not just for one
generation for the future.”

Weathered says the idea was to keep units affordable for artists – and that’s been the case for
five years.

She says it’s not perfect, but if it works for a decade or two more, it might be a model for other
artists to follow.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Urban Artists Fight for Graffiti

  • Graffiti artist Juan Carlos Noria imagines his artwork as a gift to the community. Artwork provided courtesy of JCN at them-art.com

Graffiti has been a part of urban life since ancient times. There’s also a long history of trying to get rid of it. In many North American cities, civic leaders are experimenting with new ways to eradicate graffiti. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, urban artists are determined to keep it alive:

Transcript

Graffiti has been a part of urban life since ancient times. There’s also a long history of
trying to get rid of it. In many North American cities, civic leaders are experimenting
with new ways to eradicate graffiti. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen
Kelly reports, urban artists are determined to keep it alive:


About twenty artists, most of them men, spread out on either side of a canvas wall set up
in the middle of a parking lot. They wear baggy jeans, baseball caps and gas masks. The
ground is littered with spray paint cans as they splatter color across the canvas.


(sound up)


The artists build on each other’s ideas. Horizontal purple stripes are transformed into an
exotic bird. Pen and ink drawings peek out beneath layers of orange and brown, slowly
disappearing under the paint. This is Ottawa’s first graffiti fest, organized by
local artist Juan Carlos Noria. He arrives by bicycle, wearing splattered jeans and
carrying two backpacks stuffed with spray paint.


“This is our way of giving back to the city true expression and unfortunately I do agree that some of it
is ugly but it’s like a hammer, you know? It’s a tool for building or destroying.”


Noria is a full-time artist who sells oil paintings and sculptures. But his best known work
might be his graffiti. He creates detailed pen and ink drawings on white paper. Then,
late at night, he glues them to downtown buildings.


His drawings depict the plight of humans in the modern world. One shows a man using
one hand to pour coffee into his mouth, as he pounds a hammer with the other.
Another depicts a person surrounded by bubbles representing thought – about money,
heartbreak, and the passage of time.


For Noria, this sort of unexpected art is comforting in a city that prides itself on
cleanliness.


“My living room isn’t this clean, you know? And a lot of these Ottawa streets are super
clean. In an alley that is vacant, it’s almost like a mark that a human being has been there
and I think that’s important, you know?”


But to many other people, graffiti is a sign of crime, decay and danger. That’s prompted
Ottawa to join other North American cities in introducing a graffiti management policy.
The plan includes a special phone line to report graffiti and tougher fines for those who
are caught.


The city estimates it spends about 250 thousand U.S. dollars cleaning up graffiti on city
property every year.


Paul McCann is head of Ottawa’s surface operations office. He says the biggest problem
is tags – initials or names scrawled in marker.


“I’m not talking about the nice graffiti art that a lot of people appreciate but the problem
is the tagging. Some of it is gang related. It’s not in the right place, it is considered
vandalism if you don’t have permission.”


McCann says there’s been a sharp increase in tagging. And it can make residents, and
tourists, feel unsafe. But he draws a distinction between the taggers and the so-called
serious artists.


While graffiti will never be tolerated in places like the parliament buildings, McCann is
looking for areas where graffiti can flourish, such as skateboard parks. It’s a strategy
that’s been used in other cities, including Toronto and Montreal. And it’s something Juan
Carlos Noria is eager to support.


“Graffiti is a movement of the youth. We must embrace it, say it’s not going to go away
so let’s give them spaces to work in and I think that by offering them these spaces, the
older artists will realize these are gifts, so they will in turn speak to the younger artists and
educate them and that’s what it’s all about.”


For Noria, graffiti offers a public venue to vent his frustration about pollution, capitalism,
and the ubiquity of advertising. Not long after the graffiti fest, one of his works
appeared on the wall of an abandoned theatre. It depicts an angel imagining a beautiful
gift as it sends a spray of paint onto the building.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly in Ottawa.

Growing Art in the Fields

Farmers in the Midwest grow all kinds of crops – corn, soybeans, beets, and many different types of fruit. This summer, however, a farmer in Michigan has been growing art. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney explains:

Transcript

The agricultural fields of the Great Lakes region grow all kinds of crops – corn, soybeans, beets,
and many different types of fruit. This summer, however, a field in Michigan has been growing
art. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports.


(natural sounds: moving and walking through crops, sounds of birds and crickets,
and distant traffic)


Mike Murphy has been farming land near Albion Michigan for almost 30 years. He grows corn
and soybeans in neat orderly rows. This year though he’s been working for an artist on a 37 acre
field not far from his. But instead of neat orderly rows, he’s been planting, growing, and mowing
the crop fields into the shapes of stars, moons, and circles. Its been his job to take an artist’s
concept and literally plant it something that seemed odd to him and to his neighbors.


“I thought you guys got to be nuts. It’s like the people who come drive by like the other night
when I was out here . . . What’s this guy doing out here driving around in a circle in the middle of
field? (ha ha ha) You’re in a farm community. I take a lot of harassment.”


It’s Murphy’s job to actually make this art project grow from drawings given
to him by an artist. The artist had the vision but not the technical
know-how to make it work.


“You know they thought I could plant those stars with my planter, but no, I can’t. My
input’s been that they know how to do it on paper, but I know how to do it out here.”

To create these designs in the field, Mike Murphy has had to work with people he doesn’t usually
come in contact with. Such as the man at work on the other side of the field. He’s walking
around wearing a yellow plastic satellite receiver on his back and holding a Global Positioning
System or GPS in his hands.

“This in one of the corners of the triangle, the metal stake.”

This is Dave Lemberg, a Professor of Geography at Western Michigan University. Usually he
spends his summers researching how development affects shorelines, but this summer he’s been
using the high tech tools of his trade to map an artist’s design onto the earth.

“Artists and scientists certainly can do some interesting things together.”

He’s using the GPS to methodically plot out the outlines of stars, circles, and other patterns in the
field.

“Okay, we’re getting close. I feel like I’m doing the time warp. . . step to the left, step to the
right. And we’re here. “X” marks the spot.” (sound of banging stakes fade under)

At each point, geographer Dave Lemberg places color coded flags on the
field so that farmer Mike Murphy knows where to plant, disc, and mow.
Both men are out here helping an artist named Lou Rizzola create what is
being called the Starr Earthwork.

“Designs with soil – it is a remarkable thing to watch growth and texture and pattern come from
different crops but by cutting and arranging patterns we’re designing with soil in a way.”

Rizzola created this project as a way to bring people from different walks of life together to do
something creative.

“There’s an opportunity for more people to participate in the creative experience and, uh,
sometimes we do have a tendency to get locked up in our lofts with our berets and fairly isolated,
but I think today’s art includes many, many people.”

This creation has a political message. It is the first project in a program Rizzola has started called
the “World Peace Art Initiative.” Over the last two years he’s been meeting with artists from
Australia, China, Italy, Norway, and elsewhere to develop plans for projects like this all across
the globe. He says it’s a way to use art to teach people from different backgrounds that they can
come together and work in peace and harmony.

“So are we ready to start? Can we start to get the figures? We have a lot of people here and if we
all get at it I think we can get the three figures done and we’ll be in good shape.”

Over the next few hours, this unlikely team of artists, geographers, and farmers will puzzle out
how to mark off and then get rye grass to grow in patterns in the center of the field.

“So if we did the geometric things today, the flowy thing could be done later.”

“Right, you can put some fluidity into my basepoints.”

“Okay, so let’s work on your basepoints, we”ll work with flags…
we’ll pull this out of the way.”

None of these guys have ever before grown crops in the shape of stars, moons, and the like. For
farmer Mike Murphy, getting a chance to work out in the field with geographers and artists has
been an unusual but strangely satisfying experience.

“They know what they’re doing and it’s realizing their input. Not knowing the farm part of it, what
I can do, or the way it can be done, the equipment you can use – it’s something you’ve never done
in your life, probably never will do again, that’s real enjoyable.”

When the designs in the field are finished there will be celebrations here featuring music,
dancing, and exhibits of peace banners. And there will be balloon rides. That’s how visitors to
the Starr Earthwork get a bird’s eye view of the art Mike Murphy has been growing.

“Lou, you get 8 or 9 people with weedeaters and paint the outside perimeter of this.”

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.