Recycled items create art and inspiration
By Alex Wilson 03/10/2010
Green Art People is a supercool addition to Ventura’s growing West Side art scene, where a focus of the mission is creating art from recycled objects.
Saturday morning art salons, where people discuss their latest creations and inspirations, are held weekly, as well as live music and poetry on Wednesday nights in a mellow setting.
I first heard about it through Facebook and decided to check it out because one of my favorite bands, The Sideshow Preachers, was playing.
I learned that it can be hard to find. I thought I knew my way around Ventura Avenue because I’m a Ventura native, but passed right by it twice. I finally found it behind the Artistic Car Wash near Johnny’s Mexican restaurant at 140 B N. Ventura Ave. It’s tucked away where it’s hard to see from the Avenue.
It feels like an art oasis, featuring an inviting and beautifully landscaped, art-filled courtyard with two fire pits providing a warm ambience. The building feels like the cross of the old garage, which it is, and a mad laboratory for art creation, with discarded sports trophies, shiny beads and other random items ready to become assemblage art.
Visitors are encouraged to add contributions to community art projects, including a mural where anyone can draw a face, or another where people are encouraged to write a word with a positive connotation. I got in the spirit by writing “love,” and drew some squiggly abstract lines on what appeared to be an old tetherball.
The stage where bands and poets perform also has a recycled look to it. It’s covered by branches, flowing fabric and lights that give it a vaguely tentlike feel.
Sitting by a roaring outdoor fire, co-founder and director Lisbet Frey explained their goals. “It’s kind of a three-part mission is the best way to explain it. If you look at our name, there’s the green, there’s the art, and there’s the people part. Green art is our effort to get local businesses to donate clean scrap and then provide it as material free to school teachers. And, of course, the art part is all about inspiring, creating and trying to get local artists, and also people who don’t necessarily consider themselves artists, inspired.
There’s kind of a ripple effect when you get that kind of momentum going in a community. Then they get a chance to create and network, and that’s where the people part comes in. We’re all about trying to do something positive and get people to interact,” says Frey.
Co-founder Tim Beyer says they encourage local businesses to make donations that can be used for art projects. “The items that we get are all art-based in that they are unique in some way, either by size, shape, color, material, all types of things that are used for assemblage art projects. Also, regular traditional art supplies are donated to us — paints, canvases, crafts supplies and that sort of thing,” says Beyer.
They’re working on obtaining a permit so they can also sell items to support their nonprofit mission. They’ll also be open for Spring ArtWalk on April 18 and 19.
Beyer says they’re trying to help the earth through recycled art. “Our landfills are getting filled up, and we just can’t go on wasting the way we do,” says Beyer. “And one of the ways to recycle is to reuse things and rethink the way items are used. And many items that are thought to be useless may not be, in the artistic sense.”
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