Back in school I was obsessed with waste. Well, making things out of it. For the majority of my tenure in undergrad, I felt surrounded by needless waste and under-utilized resources. Like a lot of preoccupied art students, all I could do was make trash sculptures.

These “sculptures”, or “public works”, or whatever you want to call them, were derived on the spot, improvised gestures predicated on whatever materials were lying around at the time. Biking or walking around Pittsburgh, I would find construction dumpsters, essentially turn them inside out, and create a small scene or installation where there was only a pile of garbage before.

Process was simple. Sometimes solo, sometimes with the help of a friend, I would stare at said piles for a few minutes before thinking of a scenario that would perplex me if I saw it in or around a dumpster.

For example, after finding a bunch of plates and we turned the area around a roll-off into an upscale “café”, using whatever strange trash and components lying around to create fanciful ‘dishes’, and even a ‘buffet’. We had a host stand and everything.

Another time, I converted a roll-off into an interview room. So it went, until it was time to focus on more pertinent study.

My intent was to cause any one encountering these works to challenge their own preconceptions about what trash might be. Was I just making a mess? Was it still trash? To some, perhaps.

Looking back, these gestural works make me smile. I was able to inject a landscape full of what we consider ‘refuse’ with scenes that, hopefully, would cause someone to smile, even if they were the ones “cleaning it up”.

Check out the gallery for documentation!