The Cariboo Chilcotin Conservation Society is calling on all artists to challenge themselves to make beauty out of garbage by taking part in their Trash Art Project that will be displayed in Williams Lake.
“Last year we have been quite inspired what people are doing with people’s leftovers,” says chief green officer Oliver Berger.
“One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure and we do have quite a few programs in town that kind of leads towards that like a wood reclamation permit that you can get down at the site so you can turn old wood into a brand new dog house or a fort. So we just thought let’s take that a bit further and see what else people can come up with.”
Berger adds that many local artists have already expressed interest and that they’re hoping students will follow suit.
“I don’t know if it’s catching on in Williams Lake yet, that’s why I’m here but it’s definitely catching on around the world,” Berger says of the concept of making art out of trash.
“I use a lot of social media for the stuff that I do because I’m doing waste education, and encourage litter pickups and recycling and I’m seeing quite a few people seeing an abundance of a certain type of waste. So they look at this pile of electronic waster and then they just take it apart and make some kind of animal or mural out of it. There are even quite a few people picking up garbage on the beaches and turning them into murals with whatever they find just to bring awareness to this is the stuff I find on the beach that’s in the ocean floating around and I can turn it into a piece of art.”
“It also makes people see what kind of stuff is on the ground as litter or garbage, what kind of things we throw away. It brings an awareness of what most people would just look over.”
Artists can submit their art created from discarded, unwanted, or recyclable materials to the Society until the end of May. Berger says that they’re asking artists to include a paragraph about why they chose that type of medium and how they were inspired by it.