Trash talking

With kid-friendly sculptures crafted from recycled materials, this exhibit makes a statement

Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch is adjusting her underwear. The artist has seven bright and roomy briefs hanging on the wall of the Children's Museum, each woven from aluminum cans, and one, a bit askew, needs straightening. She calls the series of sculptures "A Clean Pair for Every Day of the Week."

Goldbloom Bloch's sculpture series, made from cans, rivets, dryer vents, and gutter guards, is part of "The Dirty Dozen: 12 Artists & a Ton of Trash" - 12 bodies of work crafted from recyclable materials, on view at the Children's Museum through Oct. 2. The exhibit marks the museum's monthlong Green Festival celebration of the three Rs - reduce, reuse, and recycle.

In addition to Goldbloom Bloch's aluminum underpants, visitors to the museum can see Shane Ruff's cuddly stuffed animals made from recycled plastic bottles, Wally Warren's "Model City" ingeniously constructed from bits of trash, and Bette Ann Libby's "Planet Rooster," a colorful mosaic sculpture made out of shards of broken pottery, among other works.

"Our science educator plans green festivals, but the arts are a great way to reach audiences with some thoughtful messages," says Gail Ringel, vice president of exhibits and production at the Children's Museum. "This was somewhat ambitious for us. With 12 artists, where are we putting this piece, or that piece? And young kids put their hands on things. We've been explicit about that with the artists."

Scavenging trash for art is nothing new. Artists have been recycling for nearly a century, since the early Cubist collages of Georges Braque, Juan Gris, and Pablo Picasso. And recy cling has always come naturally to children at play. It did to Goldbloom Bloch.

"As a little girl, I went to the hardware store with my father, and picked up bits and pieces - 'What can I make out of this?' I'd make jewelry out of washers," she says, looking up at "A Clean Pair," which hangs out of reach of small hands. "I'm a bit of a trash maven. I go on a walk, and pick up something - 'that looks like a face!' "

Donna Rhae Marder made "Craft Vessel II" out of old slides, sewn together with wire. The light shines through it, and the slides project in a warm blur on the pedestal upon which the piece stands. "Everything I do is recycled," Marder says. "I'm always using materials from around the house. Playing cards, letters, slides."

Ringel was inspired to organize "The Dirty Dozen" when she saw an image of Amanda Nelsen's "Kinkade Recycled (Mountain Retreat)," a large assemblage of 40,000 pieces of junk mail, folded into small bundles and arranged to create a pixilated version of a work by Thomas Kinkade, the purveyor of gauzy romantic paintings that are art's equivalent to a Harlequin romance. The artist stopped by the museum on a recent Monday with her 11-week-old son, Leo.

To Nelsen, both the material and content of "Kinkade Recycled" indict consumerism.

"I was thinking of how much he commodified his art, and how the images are idyllic nature scenes," Nelsen says. "No trash, no trail from a car. It seems disingenuous. . . .Then I took this material we get in the mail each day that tells us what to buy."

Nelsen savors working with throwaway items. "It's a bit magical when you can make something considered trash into something of value."

The artworks approach kids on different levels. "Kinkade Recycled" models a simple way to make art out of junk mail. "A Clean Pair" has the underwear angle going for it, and its jazzy, soda-can sheen. Small children gravitate to "A Clean Pair," to Libby's "Planet Rooster," and to Ruff's "Earth Friendly Creatures," each propped on the wall over a dozen water bottles. A sign on the wall declares that it takes 12 plastic bottles to make one stuffed animal. Kids can sprawl on the Ruff-made rug below them. All are as soft and fuzzy as fleece.

Ruff threw himself into these projects after he watched a television show about recycling. "They turn the plastic into pellets in a plant in New Jersey, then sell them to a New Hampshire company that puffs them into fiber," he says. "From there they go to Draper Mills in Canton to weave into fabric. I was excited that it was a local business. I called and said, 'I need to see your factory,' and drove away with a car full of fabric."

For glass artist John Bassett, whose "Hamlet Blew It" panel hangs in the gallery's window, there are many advantages to making art from recyclables. "The materials are free," he says. "I go to the Rockport dump to get my bottles."

He's thrilled to be showing at the Children's Museum, where he brought his kids back in the 1970s. "They've had a recycling program here for 30 years, and now we bring our grandchildren here," he says. "I like recycled stuff, and that kids are into it, too. It's hip now. Thirty years ago, it was not nearly so fashionable."