I’ve been working for almost a year now developing an exciting new technique for making fine art. For lack of a better term, I am calling the co-creations Trash Paintings.
They are most definitively co-creations. In fact, this is where there real beauty lies. I’ve been working with various weavers in remote villages here in the mountains of the Philippines. I’ve been comissioning them to take their amazing technique of weaving trash to make abstract canvases. It’s been an a ongoing dialogue of training and encouragement. I’ve had to patiently explain the concept of an abstract painting and why a large flat piece could be valuable simply for its aesthetic beauty! None of these women have ever been to an art gallery and very few have ever seen even a painting. Beauty for beauty itself is a difficult thing to explain!
But that’s ok. Because their weaving is in itself immensely functional. Not only do they create bags and purses and belts and mats with it, but it uses up trash. And when I pay for the bags, paintings or whatnot, it gives financial value to the wrappers, chips packages and such that would otherwise simply have been burned or flushed into the environment to eventually release their toxicity. When waste has even a little bit of financial value, community recycling systems spring up organically to get the trash to the weavers. It’s a beautiful thing to behold.
My dream is to make a series of these canvases, big and beautiful, and display them in Berlin. Below are the prototype cocreations from villages in Mt. Province. They are for sale, should you wish to invest in beauty.
