Starting tomorrow, June 18, at 7:00 p.m., the Riverfront on NW 1st St and SW Monroe Ave will be temporarily teeming with trash-based installations, puppet shows, music and video performances, and the communal sharing of zines and other resources. The pop-up show called “Spontaneous Garbage” is partially spearheaded by Robin Weis, a local installation artist whose main medium is repurposed debris, discarded materials, and found objects.
“The Spontaneous Garbage Pop-up is a celebration of DIY and trash-based spaces,” said Weis. “As a trash-based installation artist, I’m primarily going to be using fabrics and paper recycled from my time as an OSU art student.”
The Collaborations
This installation will be a collaboration between Weis and Talia Caldwell, both of whom had worked together as installation artists for the Corvallis Garbage Fest that took place in March. It was there that Weis had expressed to one of the festival’s lead organizers, Chris Durnin, co-creator of Corvallis Experiments in Noise, that he wanted to become involved in organizing more of these kinds of events – with an emphasis on featuring local artists.
“I’ve always really liked street art and street performance, and I still want to do shows outside – which, with COVID, seems like the most appropriate thing,” said Durnin. “Being that we’re now two-and-a-half years into the pandemic, I’m curious as to how the local art scene looks right now. I know a number of people who are still in town creating, but I also know that a lot of people kind of come and go. So this show is a first stab at having nothing but local artists during the pandemic.”
In addition to installations, the pop-up will include a percussion performance by Hezekiah Franklin, a trash puppet show by Durnin, a video performance by experimental musician S Q R i, and zine distributions by emerging queer artists and activists Jayden Dukes, Serena Swanson, and Lee Niemi.
Dukes, an OSU Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) student, had previously worked with Weis both in the installation of their BFA solo exhibition – 300 Ibs – at Snell Hall during the last week of March, and on a collaborative photography session that became a feature of Weis’ exhibition – Trash Baby – held in May.
“In working with them [Dukes] to take the photograph there was a sincere joy and presence of self that I was able to feel as I embraced my queer body with a queer photographer,” wrote Weis in an Instagram post. “This image is an ultimate acknowledgment of self for me, an acknowledgment of community, and a truly liberating moment of feeling seen – there’s no greater place for this work than amongst the debris of so many of my formative experiences because it is beautiful and resilient in the way that queerness is.”
The Zines
Dukes and Swanson, a recent BFA graduate from OSU, are the co-creators of Athought, a collaborative zine series that offers space for historically marginalized creators to share their thoughts on different themes through textual or visual submissions. The Saturday fest will be the first time both artists will be selling their zines since the beginning of the pandemic.
“Athought started in 2019 as a creative outlet outside of the art [Jayden and I] were making for school,” said Swanson. “Its purpose is to have it be a safe space for marginalized folks like ourselves – queer, fat, people of color, etc. So the content often revolves around those subjects, and we’ll have past issues of Athought available at the Spontaneous Garbage event.”
Dukes added, “This event is really important in offering physical space and time to share this work with other people. I am proud to be a part of an artistic space full of queer artists who are challenging what it means to be an artist through the use of materials and processes that use trash as an object and a concept.”
Niemi, another local zinester, is also a multimedia sculptor, photographer, and creator of the nascent Bitter Pill Press, a small, experimental zine press.
“I basically made [Bitter Pill Press] as a centralized place to encompass my new bigger zine projects; it’s run by me and my roommate Jessie, and we do all the design, printing, and assembly in-house,” said Niemi. “For zines specifically, they work best if there’s also an active local scene, which I’m hoping will be the case in Corvallis eventually thanks to more events like this.”
One of the zines Niemi will have available at the event will be about his previous sculpture series, Life Cycle, which aimed to depict trans experience using insect imagery from various mediums.
A Shared Creative Space
According to Durnin, an ideal outcome for this event would be to draw and engage enough people in the community to be able to sustain putting on similar events in town more frequently.
“While the weather is nice, Robin and I have spoken generally about, depending on how this show goes, maybe doing another one potentially next month or bi-monthly after that,” he said. “So the goal will be, if everything goes well, to do one again in the not-too-distant future, and to just really focus on local artists for the time being.”
Durnin credits Weis for much of the outreach to local artists and activists who will be participating in the fest – including organizers with the Corvallis Really Really Free Market, who will be sharing free community resources and care items as well as their own zines.
“I was really excited when Robin said they wanted to play a larger part, because they organized the entire part of that,” said Durnin. “I’ve always wanted to really curate and cultivate a kind of art event that has tons of different artists from tons of different mediums doing tons of different things, and then try to encourage a spirit of collaboration among all the different artists and all the different mediums and see what happens.”
Swanson expressed gratitude that, much like with the Corvallis Garbage Fest, such an event not only embraces the limitlessness of creativity in any form, but also brings the community care and support of local mutual aid work to more people.
“I like these garbage events because it’s a gathering of creative weirdos that are making art and having fun, and it’s not like the traditional community craft fairs,” said Swanson. “And I think it’s nice to have these events so that people in the community can get the resources that they need and give out the resources that they have – ‘cause it’s not only an event that’s focused on creatives, but it’s about making sure people have a safe space.”
“Spontaneous Garbage is really just a small excuse to have a shared creative space in the heart of our community,” said Weis. “The fact that it’s brief, starting at 7 p.m. and only lasting a few hours, adds a little sweetness to the experience.”
The event is free and open to everyone; masks are encouraged, and will be worn by all participating artists.
By Emilie Ratcliff
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