Junked Art

liz-cohn-ampersand-and-owlIn Issue 11 of Kolaj Magazine, we presented Liz Cohn’s “Junked Art: The Joy of Dumpster-Driven Art Making”.

Meticulously combing the streets of Manhattan for his objects, Joseph Cornell created tightly constructed and precisely executed assemblage boxes. He lived in Queens with his mother and handicapped brother and one feels that his emotional life played out in his surreal assemblage box creations.

Present day dumpster diving or “up-cycling” carries an environmental tone. In one of the most interesting global art movements of the past 20 years, cities and towns from Portland, Oregon to Burlington, Vermont and all the way to Tasmania have opened the city dump to artists. Through subsidized programs, cities have adopted trash art competitions to raise awareness on ecology, our consumption habits and the literal trashing of our planet. These cities realize artists can mould and deliver this message and grab people’s attention. The artists have a chance to expose people to their art while bringing home these messages and firing up people’s brains and starting conversations.

As a call for creative use, Cohn includes a discussion of Portland, Oregon’s GLEAN, a joint project of crackedpots (an environmental arts organization), Recology (an employee-owned company that manages resource recovery facilities, and Metro, the Portland-area regional government).

This article originally appeared in Issue Eleven. To read the entire article and other writing about the world of collage, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj or PURCHASE ISSUE ELEVEN.

Image:
Ampersand and Owl
by Liz Cohn
box assemblage
2012
Courtesy of the artist