Trash to Treasure to Hope

This site-specific interactive art experience engaged ArtRageous: Artist in Action festival goers in transforming rubbish selected from the city’s waste stream into a single work of art. Individuals attending the festival were invited to help create panels which will be pieced together to create the final artwork. Approximately 100 panels were finished during the day which will be sealed and hung together to form a quilt-like mosaic which will then be on display in Auburn’s City Hall. The collective creativity of many will combine to create a single art work.

Trash is ugly and unsightly, but it is merely a calling card, a symbolic monogrammed glove of the master thief. Looking into the physical history of each bit of garbage reveals a complex web of
modernity into which we are all woven. During the past 100 years of King County’s history, amazing strides have been taken in cultural and technological development, but this development, often tainted with human greed, has taken a toll on the natural environment and its original human, animal and botanical inhabitants. Resource extraction and growth have hurt the waterways, fish, forests, agricultural land, and have left the soil, air and water polluted. History has handed us an aching world and the opportunity to imagine, and then create something more beautiful with what we have.

Slideshow images by Kuros Zahedi