Dump.
The guy who founded Gap stores, starting here in San Francisco, who is now a many times billionaire was in the news this week because he has decided to house his extensive art collection in his own private gallery which he will have built on hitherto open space near the Golden Gate Bridge. Not everyone is happy about this.
It coincides with a series of adverts for the shop that have appeared on bus stops around the city depicting an Audrey Hepburn-type beauty in classic pose. Otherwise the museum scene is fairly healthy.
There is a long running Matisse as sculptor exhibition in one of the main museums at one end of the scale and a fascinating exhibition inspired by cross border immigration, legal and illegal in a tiny gallery down in the Mission district. The latter is free to enter, the former, like other museums in San Francisco, is free on the first Tuesday of the month. A fairly complicated formula to remember and plan visits around.
However if you want to visit the City Dump you can do it for free but only on the third Saturday of the month.
The Dump might not be a museum nor seem to be an essential visit for the tourist in San Francisco but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth the trip across town to the Southside.
The Dump runs an artist in residence programme, something that is unique in the U.S.A. It is also something that they are rightfully proud about. The New York dump does have a resident artist but here it is something different. In San Francisco the artist is paid by the Dump, given use of a studio for three months and has 24 hour access to studio, equipment and tools as well as the Dump; up to 8 artists are chosen each year, some part time, and come from all disciplines and in the past has even included a mother and son team of instrument builder and composer.
The idea is to encourage recycling awareness by inviting an artist to rummage and create and finally exhibit. The initiative began several years ago when folk at the Dump heard about a local woman who was cleaning up the streets around her house.
Apparently she discovered discarded love letters and through careful cleaning was able to compile both sides of the communication that she assembled into some sort of scrapbook.
She started to clean up further a field, came to the attention of the Dump people and when they invited her down to see the way refuse was processed she was horrified and inspired by the amount of free art material available.
The third Saturday of the month visit is really designed for potential artists in residence to learn more about the way it works but is also the only opportunity for outsiders to visit the sculpture garden that has been created on site and which houses some of the work that has been created, along with salvaged plants and paths made from the demolished downtown freeway.
The dump is a smelly place much loved by seagulls, and the visit includes a great presentation where you learn about the efforts that are put into recycling and the horrendous quantity of rubbish that is tipped into landfill everyday; you also get to visit the artist in his studio.
The present incumbent is Nemo Gould who is a kinetic sculptor. This means he understands and uses electrical components in his work and was very excited about some transformers he had salvaged.
He exhibits in September but some of his pieces are finished and I hope it doesn’t spoil the surprise to say that he has a beautiful television set with dancing corkscrews.
The visit is both humbling and shaming. It is incredible how much waste we as a species produce, and incapable we are of dealing with it. We were recommended to look at a series of articles in the L.A.Times called “Altered Oceans”, and if you have read this far I would recommend that you check it out online too. It is frightening stuff.
The other basic message of the visit is you can’t believe what people throw away. Someone asked those responsible for overseeing what arrives to keep an eye out for a working lap top computer. Their reply was, “what make?”
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