What you throw away could end up encased in a small plastic sphere and sold out of a gumball machine for 25 cents.
Chris Goodwyn, a Washington, DC-based artist has made a hobby out of collecting strange bits of rubbish and recycling them into what he calls “quasi art.” The trashballs are part social statement, part good fun.
Goodwyn is an art school drop-out turned full-time garbage truck driver who couldn´t stop seeing a little bit of beauty in everything, including the trash people throw away. Feeling that office work was corroding his soul, Goodwyn gave up a corporate job to work for a removal company called Junk in the Trunk, where he now indulges his passion for searching garbage bins for the perfect material for his next creation.
The trashballs are an “open at your own risk” type of situation. You might find a dead bug, a losing lottery ticket, a drug baggie or half of a love letter. You might even get a five dollar bill. It’s the luck of the draw.
Goodwyn believes everything he picks up deserves a second look. His passion for trash began when he was growing up in Dayton, Ohio and his neighborhood garbage collectors sometimes let him join them for the ride. His mom, who works for an environmental NGO, instilled in him the “deep-seated urge to recycle.” He believes you can tell a lot about a person from what they throw out. (This, incidentally, is also the conceptual theme behind an exhibit on display until June 3, 2007 at Paris’s Maison Européenne de la photographie, showing photos by Bruno Mouron and Pascal Rostain, who consider themselves kind of trash paparazzi. After collecting garbage from celebrities’ trash cans, they classify, arrange and subsequently photograph it to reveal another dimension of the person who has consumed and disposed of the goods.)
Goodwyn also paints landscapes of urban decay, mostly abstracts, portraits and cityscapes of abandoned buildings. Special or oversized pieces of trash get posted at www.guyclinch.blogspot.com, on the Trashball blog, titled Trashball! A Subsidiary of Ex-Communicated Communications, Inc.
This article was published Friday, April 13, 2007.
