The Citizen Recommends: RAIR Fundraiser and Silent Auction
The Citizen Recommends: RAIR Fundraiser and Silent Auction
Recycled Artists In Residence turns trash into museum-worthy art
Nov. 09, 2015
The back lot of Revolution Recovery , a dumping station for recylable structure materials, in Northeast Philadelphia looks—to yous and me—like what it is: A constantly-growing dusty pile of refuse from construction and demolition sites around the area. There are long scraps of mangled metal, ripped apart paper-thin boxes, wallboard, plaster, ii-by-fours and the random left-behinds that collect in homes before they are demolished—a unmarried shoe, a VCR, a plaster owl. It is, incomparably, the stuff not needed anymore.
Simply for Baton Dufala and the artists he houses through Recycled Artists In Residence (RAIR), it is also a diamond mine, providing the very materials needed for conceptual art projects temporal and permanent, some of which have made their way into museums here and elsewhere. "Well, you accept to know how to look at information technology," Dufala acknowledges, as he scans the tipping chiliad, seeing potential in every truck that dumps its load. In merely a few minutes, the sculptor—ane half of artist duo Dufala Brothers —spots a metallic electric box with wires hanging from it (discarded); a ceramic railroad insulator (he collects them); and one of those owls (so many owls evidence up). It's dusty, and it's dangerous dodging trucks and falling metal. Simply it is also, to Dufala, the answer to many artists' pressing needs.
Through RAIR, Dufala and Fern Gookin, Revolution's Manager of Sustainability, offer the treasure of the tipping yard to eight artists a twelvemonth, some of whom work out of a studio upstairs from Revolution's role for several months at a time. The others exercise what RAIR calls Biggie Smallies—largescale temporary projects over the course of a few weekends that they document and then throw back in to the pit. They had 35 applications for the first yr, 2014, and 65 for the 2022 program. They expect to double that number again in the open call that ends on November thirty. This Wed, they are holding their almanac fundraiser and silent auction to aid fund its approximately $100,000 budget. (The event'southward main sponsors are Revolution and the Tuttleman Family Foundation.) Among the works of art for auction are several pieces by former residents, made from fabric plant at Revolution. (Tickets range from $35 to $75, for a VIP reception with a hazard to buy the art outright.) While RAIR artists don't take to make recycling or sustainability a message in their work, they are encouraged to limit their materials to what they discover in the yard. Dufala says that can be daunting, even for artists accepted to unconventional materials. Just it also produces works of art , both spontaneous and meticulously planned, that couldn't happen anywhere else.
Revolution Recovery itself is unconventional. Founded by Avi Golen and Jon Wybar in 2004, the company has a very specific mission: Keeping clean waste product—like the sort that comes out of construction lots by the ton—out of landfills. They started with one dumpster, manually separating the waste material into piles of plastic, wood, cardboard themselves. Now, they have a 3.5 acre lot in the Northeast that brings in 350 to 700 tons of construction waste every twenty-four hour period, with several sorters both human and automated, and a business model that is growing: Construction and demolition sites pay them to remove their waste material; Revolution sorts it, packages it, and sells it to companies that reuse the material for other products. RAIR furthers Revolution's mission by repurposing the waste for sculpture—an odd, yet fitting, mix of commerce and art.
Dufala is a Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts-trained sculptor; his brother, Steven, is a PAFA-trained printmaker. (They were both also members of experimental stone band Man Human .) They collaborate on most of their work, which spans sculpture, installations and printmaking, and their pieces have shown at PAFA, the Establish of Contemporary Art and with Temple Contemporary. (Steven Dufala is also the set designer of the award-winning performance/installation " Object Lessons .")
They discovered Revolution subsequently years of unsuccessfully trying to get clean waste material from traditional demo companies. ("Most were worried about liability," he says. "I mean you tell them y'all're an artist, they're worried yous're going to get hurt and sue them.") Instead, they took to the streets to go what they needed. Luckily—if y'all tin call information technology that—it was often non too difficult. In 2006, for case, the Dufala Brothers planned a Toilet Tricyle Race every bit part of the Fringe Festival. Only they didn't have any spare toilets—and couldn't afford to buy new ones. So Billy Dufala started riding around North Philadelphia, where in six weeks, he collected fifteen toilets from abased city lots; he got tires from abandoned bikes around town. "So much of Philadelphia is a wasteland, with trash everywhere," Dufala notes.
Revolution Recovery has a very specific mission: Keeping clean waste out of landfills. RAIR furthers Revolution'due south mission by repurposing the waste matter for sculpture—an odd, however fitting, mix of commerce and art.
A few years after, when Dufala needed skyscraper glass for a project, a friend suggested he attempt Revolution. The beginning surprise, he says, was that they allowed him on the lot. The 2nd: They happened to have a load of damaged or otherwise remaindered drinking glass from the construction of the Comcast tower—and offered him withal much he needed. After that, Dufala says, he periodically pestered Golen and Wybar to permit him (or his PAFA students) on to the lot, with varying success.
In 2010, Fern Gookin, at the fourth dimension a sustainable design educatee at Philadelphia University, approached Revolution about starting RAIR, which is loosely based on a like program in San Francisco, Recology . They hooked her up with Dufala. Withal, he says they didn't fully embrace him until Christmas of that twelvemonth, when he offered to brand their company Christmas card: A giant Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sculpture made from materials found at Revolution, standing next to him, dressed as Santa Claus. Since so, Revolution has provided RAIR with office and studio space, and free reign of the tipping yard (usually when trucks are non dumping); and RAIR has produced fine art, signs, planters and other items for Revolution.
The pairing has resulted in some remarkable works, like Abigail DeVille'due south enormous cardboard homage to Richard Serra's steel Torques Ellipse , which showed at ICA—and and so was demolished and sent back to the pit at Revolution; and the Dufala Brothers Dumpster Coffin , which led to their Pew-funded pairing with Temple Contemporary for A Funeral For A Home , a neighborhood functioning project in Mantua that culminated in a neighborhood-style "home-going" for an abandoned firm that was then demolished.
"We started using found materials out of economics," Dufala says. "But now, our work has get almost the materials, and how they fit with the conceptual and contextual aspects of the piece of work."
Header Photo: rairphilly.org
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/the-citizen-recommends-rair-fundraiser-and-silent-auction/
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