NY DEPARTMENT OF SANITATION
PUBLIC ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
2021 - 2023
From 2021 - 2023, I was embedded in the New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) as the Public Artist in Residence through the PAIR program created by the NY Department of Cultural Affairs. My experience proved to be an extensive journey through the waste stream with a backstage pass to the inner workings of the world’s largest sanitation agency. In order to make art about such a large scale operation, I did a deep dive into both historical and experiential research first. This included poring over the historical archives, visiting garages, shadowing employees, and doing ride-alongs on sanitation trucks. I wanted to experience first hand the path of our garbage and thus embarked on trips to visit some of the waste transfer stations, incinerators, and landfills that NYC utilizes.
Along the way, I fell in love with the department’s own Central Repair Shop that is housed in a million square foot facility in Woodside, Queens (lovingly referred to “as long as the Empire State Building is tall.). This extensive repair shop features mechanics, metal workers, carpenters, an upholsterer, and a paint and sign shop, which I had a particular interest in as a printmaker. All of the sanitation signage is created here and the designs are normally printed out on large-scale vinyl printers. A few decades ago however, they did it all by hand using screen-printing equipment and brushes.
When I got a tour of this dormant shop, I asked if I could use it as my art studio and they thankfully invited me in. The current sign makers and painters became colleagues and I always enjoyed seeing what projects they were working on while sharing my own. I got the shop up and running again and discovered dozens of old screens with the designs for signs and poster campaigns of yesteryear. I began reprinting these long forgotten images as a part of my research into the visual language of sanitation. How was the department communicating with the public about the same issues over and over? “Don’t Litter, No Dumping, Please Recycle,” etc…. I loved activating these old images and what better way to learn the history than by printing it. I quickly found well-crafted designs with an embedded humor in much of the campaigns. You gotta have a sense of humor to survive in this business. I started experimenting with these designs and found ways to re-contextulize these prints and collaborate with the past. This turned into a series of mono prints using silkscreen as well as my own marbling techniques that recycled the sanitation department’s own graphic history while making something new.
As I worked in the print shop, I made it a habit of walking around the building and meeting the other employees in this vast warehouse. Arguably the least seen of the sanitation department, this was the place where the care and repair went into fixing equipment and making sure everything worked safely. As people began to understand that I was really interested in historical things, I was brought to the sanitation TV studio…..yes, an old sanitation TV and video studio that was started in the late 1970s where various interviews were shot and documentary footage from the field was edited. Inside I found old cameras and obsolete video equipment along with hundreds of film reels and videotapes, the oldest dating back to 1903! I quickly realized that I needed to not only use this footage in my work but take the responsibility to archive it properly. I fired up the tape machines and began a slow digitization process that took me over a year and a half. Through the real time transfer of each tape and film reel, I learned so much more about the department’s history as well as the city itself. I even found the retired employee, Mike Barbarotto, who had created this Audio Visual department and brought him in to help fix some of the machines and give me his unique perspective on the footage. Turns out, when he came on the job in 1975 he had found the oldest film reels under a slop sink and thankfully held onto them! History sure has a way of repeating itself, eh?
As part of my residency, I created the Office of In Visibility (OOIV) as an umbrella platform to publicly research and remix these incredible DSNY archival materials into my artwork. From film and video to silk-screen posters, interactive public projects and even a video game, these activations offer a reflection of New York’s sanitation history while highlighting the path that led us to the environmental issues we face today. I was able to show my re-edited videos to 10,000 DSNY employees on the flatscreen TVs that can be found throughout the department and have extensively shared many of my remixed discoveries on social media. I also created The Privy Pit, a public interactive waste study project with prompts that anyone can do and submit to the archive. I have had a few exhibitions so far (more to come) and I published a book called Sign Language that focuses on the sanitation signs and prints. I am currently working on another book and a larger film project with the film and video archive. So, stay tuned because I ain’t done yet!
