I always compose, reuse, reduce and recycle: I only produce a little bag of garbage every two months. Since the Toronto city workers strike started a month ago, many faced the great inconvenience to deal with their garbage, however it has no effect to me. After seeing the garbage piling up in downtown near my studio and most of them should be recycle but when the strike is over most of this would just end up in the landfill. I decide to do something about it and started to use some of the garbage I found on the street and use to create art.
Shortly, after I posted some of these samples on the internet it caught the attention of a Global National reporter. Within days, she and the crew came to my studio and filmed a feature on me and my recycled art.
On the same weekend, I was one of the 500 artists showing my art at the Toronto outdoor art exhibition at Nathan Phillips square. Thinking it could be a great opportunity to educate the public how to reuse some of these garbage so I brought along some of my recycle art to show along with my paintings. To my surprise many collectors brought my art made from garbage.
And even better, my feature was showed on prime time at Global national news on July 14 and the night before during prime time they used me as their promote for the next day’s news. I was called “Rembrandt of Garbage”!
So the Toronto garbage strike brought me my two minutes of fame!
