Don’t be down in the dumps
Take trash-talking to a new level with Trash Bash storytelling event
By Emily Lindblom
For the TODAY
Photos by Broken Banjo
The Trash Bash Art Festival is returning to the Nehalem Valley this Friday, May 5, through Saturday, May 20, with the theme of emergence.
Jessi Just, executive director of Heart of Cartm, said this is the natural next step to last year’s theme of transformation. The recycling organization has changed since it began in 1999 into the nonprofit it is today, focusing on repairing, reusing and reducing waste.
“This is the year we recognize we have created something different,” she said. “We have transformed and, similar to the butterfly, there is the process of being in the chrysalis and there is the process of coming forward with something new.”
The Trash Bash itself has evolved from its origins a one-day event. This year it will be a series of events over multiple days, including the new “Trash Tales Storytelling” that will encourage people to talk about their experiences involving trash and waste. The bash will also feature the classics: the Trash Art Gallery and the Trashion Show.
“We are ready to emerge with some fresh new ideas and we’re asking people to do the same,” Just said, “to talk about their experiences, create art about their experiences and come out and celebrate what we have been through as a community, knowing that the community’s here for you and so is Heart of Cartm.”
Denise Harrington, a longtime bash goer, will be one of the storytellers sharing her tales of collecting marine debris while sea kayaking.
“That’s something I’m fixated on, when I paddle in the ocean and see marine debris I fill my boat up and dispose of it,” Harrington said, adding that collecting the trash is like the cost of admission for her to be out on the water.
Harrington was a teacher in the Tillamook School District when she applied for the NOAA Teacher at Sea program. Through the program, she helped map the ocean floor off Alaska and conducted shark surveys in the Gulf of Mexico. Recently, she received a fellowship regarding her work with marine debris.
She has worked with Heart of Cartm to put on a science and art workshop, where participants collected marine debris and created art with it. For the last Trash Bash, she had her students from Wilson School create mosaics out of marine plastics, and those were some of the first art pieces to be sold at the Trash Art Show.
Through her stories, Harrington hopes to help people become more cognizant about the material things they buy and to appreciate how much nature can provide.
“I’m not saying I've mastered the art of mindfulness with consumption,” she said. “But I aim to share my struggle with that journey and how my relationship with trash and marine debris has caused me to pause a little more and reflect on how fulfilling nature can be instead of manufactured goods.”
Aina Tonjes has also been involved with the bash since its beginnings, and has emceed for the Trashion Show for more than a decade. The fashion pieces are all composed of things that would have otherwise been thrown away.
“There’s so much creativity,” she said. “We've been doing it for years, but there are always new ways to fashion a newspaper dress.”
Crocheting is Tonjes’ preferred method of putting trash together into an outfit. One year, she made a dress out of audio cassette tapes, and another year she crocheted magazines together to create a dress. One of her favorite creations was a headpiece and corset made of soda pull tabs paired with a shower curtain skirt.
Rhonda Gewin is planning to wear a dress made out of 1970s wallpaper and bed springs for a hoop skirt, accessorized with dreadlocks of toilet paper rolls and plastic caps. This will be her second time attending the bash.
For last year’s Trash Art Gallery, she made a four-foot articulated salmon out of cat food can lids and a rake for a tail.
“I used a lot of kitchen utensils and jello molds,” she said “I made a little bat and a character like a little woman who stood about a foot tall.”
This year, she plans to display another fish with cat food can lids for scales, and this one hangs from a wall.
When she moved to the coast six years ago, Gewin was inspired to start creating art using recycled objects.
“Now I’m an award-winning artist who creatively recycles,” she said, “and it’s an addiction I can’t stop now.”
One of her awards was for making the articulated salmon anatomically correct.
Her favorite source for trash art supplies is a trash can outside an auto parts store, so she ends up using a lot of windshield wipers.
“It makes you look at garbage in a whole different way,” she said. “To one person it's garbage and to another it’s art supplies.”
She said if an artist can visualize a piece, they should go for it.
“A lot of things were going to be thrown away anyway,” she said, “so there’s nothing to lose if you throw it together.”
For more information, to purchase tickets and to sign up for the Trashion Show or Trash Art Gallery, go to heartofcartm.org/trash-bash-art-festival.
Friday, May 5, 5 to 7 pm
Trash Art Gallery Opening
COVE Gallery, 395 Nehalem Blvd., Wheeler
Trash Art Gallery open Thursday through Monday, May 5, to May 21
Sunday, May 7, 2 to 4 pm
Trash Tales Storytelling
Hoffman Center for the Arts, 594 Laneda Avenue, Manzanita
Friday, May 19, 6 to 8 pm
Trash Tales II Storytelling & Raffle
Rockaway Roastery, 165 S Miller Street, Rockaway Beach
Saturday, May 20, 4 to 9 pm
Trashion Show
With musical guests Johnny Wheels & The Swamp Donkeys
Nehalem Bay Winery, 34965 Highway 53, Nehalem