By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
"Walking the Dog" by Alshaa T. Rayne.
By Nadine Kam
Assistant Features EditorGIVEN the option of living in Honolulu or Volcano, one must weigh the big-city crowds, high rises and traffic against the beauty and tranquility of a Big Island rain forest. No contest, right?
Well, there is one thing that can lure artist Ira Ono away from his lush Volcano digs and into the steely city: our trash.
"Good dumpsters are getting harder to find on the Big Island," he said, "You have better ones here. I definitely case the joint as soon as I get off the plane."
Back home, he has three storage spaces to contain his stash of telephone wire, handmade papers, wigs and old photos. A collection of bowling balls sits in his rain forest garden. It makes for a curious and wondrous juxtaposition.
Ono is in town as juror for "Recycle Art '97," an art exhibition opening tomorrow at Honolulu Hale. A highlight of the event will be a performance by Henry Kapono, accompanied by the Kamehameha Schools Children's Chorus, performing on musical instruments fashioned from recycled goods.
By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
"Excessively Rampant Symbolism" by Leah Kilpatrick
first place winner of the "Recycle Art '97" exhibit.
In between his dumpster-diving forays and overseeing the installation of his "Marilyn: Peep Show" piece at the Honolulu Academy of Arts' "Elvis + Marilyn" exhibition, Ono mulled over assemblages created from typical household discards -- laundry detergent jugs, wine corks, rusted push pins -- and even a grocery cart abandoned by its homeless owner.It wasn't easy to weed through the 400 works dropped off at City Hall Monday, because this is the one art show that draws everyone from keiki to pros.
"The show is perceived as being not as serious (as other exhibitions) so people who want to do something come out," Ono said.
By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Wine bottle corks are transformed into the "Red Wine"
recycled art necklace by Patricia Greene..
The "outsider artists" usually include "someone who has seen the show before and said, 'I could do that.' We also get artists working in other genres and other materials who will stop what they're doing to create a piece for the show."It does take a certain amount of creativity to look at materials in another way. This kind of show is very refreshing and freeing."
Ono has been working with recycled materials for 30 years, beginning when he was a student of painting and dance in New York. He couldn't afford to buy costumes, and even if he could afford them, chances are they weren't "strange and compelling" enough.
By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
A typical garden hose makes up the graceful lines of
"Jose the Table Lamp" by Don Walker.
Ono arrived in Hawaii 25 years ago, creating visual and performance art on the Big Island. He started "The Trash Show" in Hilo in 1991, and was hired by the Maui and Oahu counties to create recycling awareness through art. "The Recycled Show" opened in Honolulu in 1994, followed by Maui's "The Art of Trash" in 1996.Each show offers such a visual and tactile feast that they attract touchy-feely types. If those types happen to be clumsy ... watch out.
"I have to tell artists to secure all design elements well because work does get touched," Ono said.
Although it is the artistic expression that most viewers find beautiful, for Ono, trash itself is prized.
"If I'm holding onto something, it's because I think it's precious," he said. "I don't know when, how or even if I'll ever use it, but I'll schlep it where ever I live."
Government is rarely described as innovative, but the promotion of recycling through art shows there is some creative thinking going on at City Hall. Creative recycling
is everybody's businessArt offers a visual and fun way of getting a rather staid, repetitive message across, says Oahu City Recycling Coordinator Suzanne Jones, and the timing is right.
Currently, H-POWER and recycling have been helpful at reducing the volume of trash going to landfills by 90 percent.
"But we're at a crossroads," she said. "We cannot keep siting landfills on this island, and the question is, can we get more recycling to happen or do we have to expand the H-POWER plant at a cost of millions of dollars?"
In order to meet these challenges, she said we need to rethink the way we do things. "We have to think outside the box and artists do that all the time. That's the kind of thinking we need to move into the future."
Here are some of her tips for making the most of your trash:
Trim the "green waste" habit. When mowing the lawn, it's OK to be lazy. Leave the clippings where they lay as a mulch to help the lawn retain moisture. This also reduces the amount of trash entering Hawaii's waste stream.
Compost yard trimmings and kitchen scraps for use in the garden. The City Organics Recycling Office offers community workshops in small-scale back-yard composting. Register at 262-0794.
In addition, branches and clippings can be dropped off daily at any of six Oahu City Refuse Convenience Centers. The clippings are chipped into mulch and converted into compost for use in city botanical gardens and parks. Call the City Recycling Office at 527-5335 for the center nearest you.
By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Tracy Ramos, 8, comes face to face with a recycled barracuda.
Plan to bring your plastic grocery bags back to the supermarket the next time you go shopping. Most offer a 5-cent discount on your groceries for each recycled bag you use. Or reuse those bags to line small trash cans, instead of purchasing new trash bags.
