1. Beautiful Garbage
by Thalia Bloom

2. Trash should be beautiful
• Found art, a popular form of public art, is
about making trash beautiful.
• Go straight to the source.
• Make disposal beautiful.
• Trashcans should be attractive, but also
practical and easy to empty.

3. Examples elsewhere:
• Singapore has an entire “Trash Island”,
turned eco-tourism attraction.

4. • Tokyo also has an extremely systematic and
fairly attractive system.

5. But NewYork could do better.
• We could have ARTISTIC trashcans.
• Specifically, we could have animal trashcans--ones
that you would feed trash too.
• It should be clear which ones are recycling trash
cans and which are not. So signs would have to be
obvious.
• This could also be an ironic statement about the
environment. Humans constantly force animals to
eat the waste we dispose of.

6. • “Animal art, unlike other playground surfaces,
was almost never damaged by vandals”
--Park Commissioner Henry J. Stern
• Animal trashcans would provide the same safe
atmosphere.

7. Location: Roosevelt Island
• Roosevelt Island has essentially no public
art.
• It has a very pristine atmosphere.

8. Aesthetics• Not too cute
• But not grotesque either

9. Ideas I toyed with:
• Character cans--possibly too annoying?
• “Hi, I’m Pete. I like to eat paper.”

10. • Book characters: like Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland, or Frog and Toad, byArnold Lobel
• This would encourage small children to read, or
relate their lives to what they read.

11. • To some, book characters are too trite.
• But animal designs that have the same personality
and spirit of those book characters could achieve the
same affect.
• Children enjoy the picturesque trash cans and
cleaning up after themselves more, and adults might
feel nostalgic and feel safer in a child-friendly
environment.