2012 Recology SF Artist In Residence Recipients

San Francisco Dump’s Artist in Residence Program Announces 2012 Residency Recipients

San Francisco, CA. Recology San Francisco is pleased to announce recipients of artist residencies for 2012. The six selected artists are Beau Buck, Tamara Albaitis, Amy Wilson Faville, Michael Damm, Julia Goodman, and Jeff Hantman.

The Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco is a one-of-a-kind initiative started in 1990 to support Bay Area artists while teaching children and adults about recycling and resource conservation. Artists work for four months in a studio space on site and use materials recovered from the Public Disposal Area. Over ninety professional Bay Area artists have completed residencies. Applications are accepted annually in August.

http://www.recologysf.com/AIR


Beau Buck: 
Residency: February-May; Exhibition reception: May 18 and 19, 2012

Beau Buck’s work is shaped by a kinship with animals and a personal mythology that draws on Native North American stories and contemporary folklore. Buck has crafted headgear—often modified motorcycle helmets—to approximate the heads of horses and buffalos. In his 16mm films, people are seen wearing these costumes in scenes tinged with magic realism which blur the lines between humans and animals. During his residency, Buck will expand on previous work to create numerous life-size jackrabbits made from worn garments, old uniforms, and other textiles. Buck’s art explores what is mysterious or unknown about the animal world to prompt contemplation about our own relationships with these creatures and the greater environment. Buck will share studio space with Karrie Hovey who was awarded a 2011 residency; their joint solo exhibitions will take place in May.

Tamara Albaitis and Amy Wilson Faville
Residency: June-September; Exhibition reception: September 21 and 22, 2012

Tamara Albaitis uses technology to mimic nature through sculptural sound installations. A painter by training, Albaitis often “draws” on walls, floors, or through space with the functional speaker wires used to transmit her sounds. She is interested in environments—be they natural, constructed, or simulated—that exist in our technologically saturated world, and explores their relationships to the global ecosystem and our own psyches. While at Recology, Albaitis will make use of the ample electronics that pass through the facility, such as old computers, discarded stereos, and speaker cones from TVs. She hopes to also incorporate welded metal in her installations which will feature sounds scavenged from the facility.
Piles of discarded items in the Public Disposal and Recycling Area will be familiar to Amy Wilson Faville who for the last year has been photographing public dumping sites in her Oakland neighborhood as sources for her paintings. In her work chaotic piles become tableaus that suggest complicated personal narratives, while also serving as metaphors for economic and societal collapse. Previous collage work has been based on photos Wilson Faville has taken of shopping carts used by the homeless. The patterning of the paper and fabrics that Wilson Faville brings together in abstract arrangements in these works are suggestive of quilts or curtains and allude to issues of home and security. During her residency Wilson Faville will photograph piles of refuse and continue with her 2-D collage work, making images of discarded material from discarded material.

Michael Damm, Julia Goodman, and Jeff Hantman 
Residency: October-January; Exhibition reception: January 25 and 26, 2013 

Video and installation artist Michael Damm will use the Recology Environmental Learning Center as both studio and gallery during his residency. Expanding on a body of site specific installations that present video works as unexpected, large-scale projections in urban traffic corridors, Damm will use the building’s windows to project images viewable to those passing on the street or riding Caltrain. For another work, Damm, who is interested in reframing experiences of the ordinary to induce new perceptions or alter habitual ways of seeing, will use a macro lens to film objects found in the Public Disposal and Recycling Area. His images will explore the idea of refuse as a landscape, and survey the waste stream as an index of material culture.


Julia Goodman uses paper and fabric pulp to create sculptural forms that conceptually relate back to their source materials and the items used in their making. Previous work includes a series of public wheatpastings using handmade paper, and the recreation of her parents’ love letters using their old bed sheets for pulp. Process and the history of papermaking are an integral part of Goodman’s work, and she has incorporated these elements into performative events that include either making paper or papyrus. Goodman will construct molds and drying systems from found materials during her residency, and will look for a variety of paper and fabrics from which to make her pulp. She will incorporate hand-carved marks and preexisting textures into her pieces, and plans to exhibit the objects used to make her paper as sculptural armatures or foundations for the finished works.
Jeff Hantman combines painting and printmaking in three-dimensional pieces on wood that bow or curve out from the wall. Hantman’s background as a woodworker informs his process which requires bending and shaping found materials, especially plywood, to create the rounded forms he uses as his canvases. Signs of wear, stains, paint, and other remnants of the wood’s previous use are incorporated into the works that are influenced by deteriorating structures such as old barns or water towers, as well as personal memories of places and events. Hantman, who normally scavenges for the wood he uses, looks forward to the abundance of items available at the dump and hopes to create larger-scale pieces and incorporate new materials, such as discarded household belongings, that are arched or can hold a curve.

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