When I first showed up at Erik’s studio, we started talking about an installation he was building for a house in Soma.  Upon inspection of how much space and the new environment he had acquired, he was very excited and raved about ”activating the space.”

“A neighbor [of mine] was throwing out some of his pornography and I asked him why he was doing that, he said he was clearing out a part of his life, who I later found died a couple months later”

If you look closely you can see syringes within the individual boxes which people found a symmetry to drug addiction.  Pieces are derived in an organic matter, the ideas coming to the artist after spending some time with them for a while.

Q: What do you love most about living in the Bay Area?

A: Its so green.

Q: How would you describe your art to a stranger?

A: I fit things together.

Q: When are you most productive?

A: Late night, around 2 am.

Individual plastic containers placed in front of a collage.

Q: Is there an artist that has inspired or influenced your work?

A: Joseph Cornell; I read when he would sweep his mom’s basement, he would collect and save the dust.

(Above) Truong luckily found a large amount of protein cups, cut out magazine pieces and arranged them in each cup.  He mentioned that he goes to the Alcoa aluminum foundry to make his frames. Truong has a fascination of transforming objects by dipping them in wax from old candles.  When he goes to Scrap and finds a large amount of a repetitive item, he will buy them and store them away until he can find a use for them.

Q: What was the last show you attended?

A: It would have to be my own, after my last show at the Minna gallery I was exhausted.  I go to my students concerts, but the music is a little hardcore for me, but I try to make it to other art shows as often as possible.

He would write poems on this piece and sporadically erase parts of the poem to the point of it losing its coherence.  Truong says of this, “I wanted to lose myself in the art when erasing the letters and words”

Q: What future direction do you see your art work taking?

A: Tone down the pieces, and not use as much lighting as I have in past pieces.

One of his published books Within the Margin, was inspired by Richard Serra who stated “In order for art to exist in our society there will have to be marginalized artists.:  The poems from the book had the intention of wrapping all the way around the gallery, he tried to have his book without margins, but the printers weren’t able to not have margins, “technology has limited many of his endeavors.”

This April 1st, take a chance to be fooled or not by Marco Zamora and Derek Albeck @ Fecal Face.

Working Proof has teamed up with Erik Otto to sell prints for Architecture for Humanity.  The Working Proof is a socially responsible commerce site that pulls together artists and non-profits to work together.  The artist will decide on what prints to give while working proof will promote their product and then give 15% to the organization of the artists choosing.  In this case Erik scavenged 25 record sleeves for his canvas to then make his prints by hand with house paint, spray paint and screen printing, which are then being sold to help the effort of Architecture for Humanity in Haiti.

Check out the site, a lot of great works for a great cause.

Christine Lee with the spirit to create by hand and the ambition to make the thrown away useful:

From my tendency to engage in highly process-driven tactile endeavors and my training in the craft based disciplines of woodworking and furniture design. i explore stretch and refine the typical associations and intended functions of mundane materials. My architecture and the natural environmnet, particularly where a strong connection exists between structure and site.

Shims and a thousand uses for them.

Phonebooks and their many new uses.  Why do I find these on my apartment steps? Its time to create an ordinance that phonebooks can only be delivered at request.

A perspective of unwanted phonebooks and their depth or as Christine would eloquently put:

the outdated phone book represents the weaving of a visual pattern found in organized information with a behavioral pattern existing in repetitive processes

A closeup of names and her creation

Her repetitive process creates as though it came from nature

Steel case meets paper

via missleelee

Nathan focuses most of his creative time on painting but when the mood strikes him he dabbles with found materials.

Nathan Gibbs:

“Sometimes when I am looking through pieces of wood in the old ghost towns of Death Valley, or combing the beaches of central California, I imagine the wood talking to me, saying ‘pick me, pick me! I can do this for you’, like they are wanting a second chance feeling as though they failed somehow in not being a good rocking chair, or coastal tree.”

The above painting representing Nathan’s home in the OC.

With whatever material he could find, coupled with his surf art obsession, created this fine wave.

Wood scraps make a nice bowl.

Nathan has also released a book available through blurb.

Daphne Ruff‘s beautiful collages show her passion to mix many sources into one cohesive piece.

A native of Eugene, Oregon and now a current resident of Oakland California, Daphne’s most current obsession is combining found objects into unique purses as seen below.

All of her handbags are custom made and unique.

Daphne Ruff:

Some of these purses tend to be slightly heavier than your average purse, but women have always endured a little pain for the sake of beauty.

The beauty, pain and art of being a woman, so eventually, like I sometimes do, a man can carry the woman to a taxi after a full night of dancing in heels.

A full collection of purses,  from her own satchels and messengers to your own custom orders.

Handmade, omitting any use of a CNC machine and with upcycled cardboard, we present a simple chair unlike most cardboard designs made from new materials.  As today’s recycled cardboard arrives at recycling centers folded up and dirty, it made sourcing for this project the most difficult part.

Costco was happy to provide.

The next step:  play around with some designs in Adobe and connect the dots.

Here is the template.

A dark alley by the railroad tracks is accomodating.

We were in need of business cards to give out and the Office Depot business card packet wasn’t worthy, so we did TV screen business cards.  Check out the video above to see the  upcycled/reclaimed process and listen to some funky beats.

If you want to reproduce this process you first need to find a TV screen out of a projection TV.  We found ours at the local recycling center in the e-waste pile.

The biggest problem we had was finding a stencil material that was durable and wouldn’t wrinkle or warp after repeated use.  Don’t use frisket film from Michael’s that was a big mistake unless you plan on only using it a couple times.  We couldn’t find the easy cut plastic for stenciling so we just used a garage sale sign from Lowe’s.  The paint was reclaimed and pulled from the recycling center paint pile.  A hobby shop will tell you not to use latex paint with an airbrush gun, but we did a 50/50 mix of water and paint and it only clogged up once and was easy to clean out.

TV screen material produces a holographic affect when you paint on two different sides.

From these two pictures you can tell how it changes from looking at it straight on or from an angle.

]]> http://cwoca.com/cwoca/tv-screen-business-cards/feed/ 1 http://cwoca.com/cwoca/corrugated-butter-video-2/ http://cwoca.com/cwoca/corrugated-butter-video-2/#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:59:28 +0000 Matthew-Harrison http://cwoca.com/?p=1343

Handmade, omitting any use of a CNC machine and with upcycled cardboard, we present a simple chair unlike most cardboard designs made from new materials. As today’s recycled cardboard arrives at recycling centers folded up and dirty, it made sourcing for this project the most difficult part.