Friday, January 15, 2010

Dumpster Decorating: It's a Wrap!


Wrapping ordinary—even industrial—objects in pretty materials and patterns may well be the trend of the turn-of-the decade.
Indeed, Jeanne-Claude and the late Christo have wrapped everything from palaces to bridges, with the results looking, to my eye, like a stunning Madame Gres dress.



We've also seen William Morris prints jazz up humble gardening tools.



And a savvy bunch of knitters—calling themselves yarnbombers in Canada and guerrilla knitters in Britain—are covering outdoor objects from bicycles to trees to telephone booths.





Now Finley, an American artist living in Rome has turned her eye to the New York City Dumpster and the results are delightful. (Her work was, however, tagged by graffiti writers not too long after it was completed, which could actually be an act of hospitality—a friendly “welcome to the neighborhood, fellow New Yorker” sort of gesture.)



Wouldn’t taking out the garbage be a slightly more enjoyable task if there were a pretty receptacle in which to toss it?