email: diane (at) rubyreusable.com
News and Events Archive
Diane Kurzyna’s sculpture, "Bag Lady," is part of the 2nd Annual Juried Group Show at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, January 5 - 30, 2007:
South Puget Sound Community College Art Gallery
Diane Kurzyna has artwork included in an invitational group show at the North Wind gallery in Port Townsend:
North Wind Gallery
January 19th – February 26th, 2007
New Tribune - October 22, 2006, Tacoma, WA:
Dumpster divers turn used goods into artistic gold
by Rosemary Ponnefanti
"Artist" and "Dumpster diving" don’t occur to most people in
the same sentence. You think artist, you think hip, intellectual, groovily-dressed. Don’t you?
Well, it’s time to change the stereotype. Artists work with paint, clay, film, yes - but they also work with rusty wire, fruit stickersand beer cans with dubious contents. The fifth Recycled Art and Fashion Show in Ballard proves that art from trash can be just as valid and beautiful as any other - and as difficult to pull off.
It’s a big show. Three venues, 50 artists from all over Puget Sound (including three Tacomans) and, naturally, a huge range of media. Metal, plastic, paper, wood, fabric, computers, bicycle tubes: If it’s been used, it’s there. The works are roughly sorted into categories: fine art and fashion at the New York Fashion Academy building, books and print at Art Books Press down the road, and industrial material at the RE Store, a salvage material vendor that for the third year has collaborated with the show's curator, Olympia
artist Diane Kurzyna, to support and host the exhibition.
Most of the work is literally recycled. There’s a recycled-content percentage on each wall label. But some is pre-consumer - the "Wedding Party" made of tissue and bubble-wrap by Corky and Victoria Brown of Tacoma - and some, like Chris Jordan’s stunning large-scale photography of piles of scrap cars and cell phones, uses conventional media to highlight waste issues. There's even designer fashion. The common factor, as Kurzyna puts it, is "the willingness to explore . . . unwanted, unloved materials."
Which is where the Dumpster diving comes in. Ross Palmer Beecher, a Fremont artist who works mainly with metal, is a veteran, looking through the trash bins of the University District, Capitol Hill and Magnolia on her daily bicycle commute.
"You need rubber gloves, of course, and a flashlight, or maybe a headlamp," explains the artist. "Then you just climb up and dive in. I get a lot of motor-oil cans, soda cans, paper, plastic - anything, really. I like to find the most revolting (stuff) and make something of it. It's a game."
Does she ever get sick?
"I clean everything thoroughly," says Beecher, a small-boned, wiry woman in baggy black clothes who’s represented by Greg Kucera Gallery. "And I get my tetanus shots. But I've been doing this since I was a little kid, and I've never gotten sick."
Looking at Beecher’s work, it’s hard to believe it was once revolting Dumpster debris. Beecher "fillets" hundreds of soda and beer cans, cutting and flattening the metal and weaving it delicately with wire to make quilts with ironic political statements. "Bush Flag - 005" cleverly recreates Old Glory, with BUSH in Busch beer letters (interwoven with four real bullets) and stripes of alternating silver aluminum and Coke labels. "Russian Flag" is even more intricate, the white, blue and red stripes woven from Stoli labels and paint, hinged at the ends with Communist Party buttons. The effect is beautiful, weirdly ethereal. As you look at this art, you have to think - did all this stuff really come from a Dumpster?
BUT IS IT ART?
Not all trash becomes art, unfortunately. Stuart Gullstrand’s "Fetish," a cubist face some 2 by 3 feet with salad scoops for eyes and nose and long bolts for hair, doesn’t transform its collection of junk. Mick Lorusso’s triptych of computer motherboards framed by columns of keyboards don’t inspire, either, the rather moralistic printouts of recycling statistics reminding you of a middle school science project.
Yet "Apotheosis of Key Beings," Lorusso’s central installation at the Fashion Academy, is arresting. Computer keys fly up along a pyramid of wires from scattered keyboards on the floor like some parallel galaxy of electronic life-forms. (Both of his works are a collaboration with the RE Store’s e-waste program.) And Dumpster-diving Gullstrand’s "DNA Strands," spirals of gloriously-colored strung bottle tops on the RE Store’s exterior wall, match any conventional materials for sculptural tone.
It’s hard to decide just what makes recycled art work. Tacoma artist Traci Kelly’s "Six of One," which fills plastic Easter eggs with found debris such as computer chips and cigarette butts, stays at the level of trash-can plastic; while her "Urban Chic" egg makes a gorgeous parody of Faberge using woven copper strands in a nest of plastic straw. Transformation seems to be the key: as Kurzyna, whose "Bag Lady" of wildly dotted Wonder Bread bags graces the window, puts it, "The transubstantiation of garbage into art is like making a silk purse from a sow’s ear."
When it fails, all you see is pigskin. When it succeeds, you are stopped in your tracks by both visual grace and provocative rethinking.
RECYCLED TREND
Recycled art is not, of course, something new. H.C. Westermann, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg made found-object art glamorous, though folk artists and quilt-makers had been doing exactly the same thing for decades.
In Third World countries, where trash is more valuable, objects are constantly reincarnated.’ In fact, points out Bill Fleming, an Olympia artist whose Deco-like lamp of reused pots and pans illuminates the show’s entry, it’s really only in the recent modern era of accessibility to processed materials that art has been elevated beyond what was found to what was bought.
Yet it does seem that found-object art is getting a new trendiness that takes it from the realm of self-taught and folk art to the glossy world of chic galleries. Costume design Oscar winner Liz Garner turned up to collect her 1995 award in that famous dress made of American Express gold cards; the year before, Isaac Mizrahi designed a dinner jacket with soda-can sequins. Recycling is going from oddball thrift to ultra-fashion.
Just what is the attraction? The cost of conventional materials is one factor; another is the uniqueness of what you find. Artists are also more environmentally conscious than most, perhaps. But it’s more than that.
"Recycled materials bring the ghosts of their past lives with them, adding to your own statement," says Fleming. "Trash says so much about our culture, how we create - then ignore - waste."
What: Recycled Art and Fashion Show
Who: 50 Puget Sound artists, curated by Diane Kurzyna
Where/When: Three Seattle locations:
New York Fashion Academy
5201 Ballard Ave. N.W.
6-9 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays;
Art Books Press,
4703 Ballard Ave. N.W.
noon-5 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays
the RE Store
1440 N.W. 52nd St.
3-6 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays
Runs: Through Nov. 14
Information: Marty Brennan at the RE Store, 206-423-0675 or www.re-store.org/recycledartshow.htm
Fashion information: www.hautetrash.org
Seattle RE-Store
Diane Kurzyna is once again collaborating with the Seattle RE-Store to present a Recycled Art Show with art from recycled materials by artists of the Puget Sound area, October 14 - November 14, 2006.
Hallie Ford Museum of Art - Recycled Art
August 26-November 4, 2006
Recycled Art will feature the work of a number of regional artists from Oregon, Washington, and Idaho who fashion artwork from recycled materials. Included in the exhibition will be artists such as Diane Kurzyna, who makes dolls from plastic bags and bottles, Ross Palmer Beecher, who creates traditional quilts from recycled aluminum cans; Gloria Crouse, who makes fanciful clothing from Glad bags; David Gilhooly, who creates miniature tableaus from recycled plastic action figures and old puzzles; and Ron Ho, who makes exquisite jewelry from found objects.
Diane Kurzyna will also teach a family day workshop on Saturday afternoon, October 7, 2006.
HERE TODAY: Meet the Artist (for adults)
Tuesday, September 12, 2006 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Meet local artists Diane Kurzyna, Maitri Sojourney, Eric Fleming, and Devon Damonte, four artists who are participating in the City of Olympia’s HERE TODAY project, temporary public art projects that have been on exhibit throughout downtown Olympia.
Olympia Timberland Library
313 8th Ave. SE
Olympia, WA
360-352-0595
HERE TODAY is a project of the Olympia Arts Commission, and Olympia Parks, Arts & Recreation Department, with support from the Washington State Arts Commission
For more information, contact Olympia Arts & Events at (360)709-2678, or visit www.olympiawa.gov/events
HERE TODAY
View article in the News Tribune, Sunday, August 13, 2006
View article in The Olympian, Friday, July 28, 2006
View article in The Olympian, Sunday, July 9, 2006
The City of Olympia has commissioned eight local artists to add artistic vitality to downtown Olympia this summer through HERE TODAY temporary public art installations, July 15 - September 15.
Diane Kurzyna is creating life-sized figures made from unwanted plastic wrap, used bubble wrap, and tape for this project. These figures will be moved around to various indoor and outdoor downtown locations, generating a sense of wonder and surprise as people encounter these "Ephemeral Folks." These folks are intended to celebrate the quiet magic of everyday moments.
"Observer" in shop windows 7/15-9/15;
"Explorer" on The Dash 7/24-8/7, on benches 8/7-8/21;
"Dreamer" in the Farmers Market garden 8/24-8/27 & 8/31-9/3;
"Actor" at The Capitol Theater 9/5-9/15.
Museum of Glass - Chihuly Shoe Painting on the Plaza
Saturday, August 12, 2006 1 - 4 pm
Dale Chihuly’s style is unmistakable, including his wild painted shoes! Now you can create a pair of your own — you bring the shoes and we'll provide the paint. Dale will lead the workshop for children 10 and under from 1:30 - 2 pm, and guest artist Diane Kurzyna will continue to lead the activity until 4 pm.
© 2007 Diane Kurzyna*© 2007 Lilthea Designs