In the February 19, 2025 Local 20/20 Column in the Port Townsend Leader, Tracy Grisman describes the Artist in Residence and Educational Program and how one can get involved.
Creating Out of the Box While Playing Nice in the Sandbox
by Tracy Grisman
“The design of garbage should become the great public design of our age. I am talking about the whole picture: recycling facilities, transfer stations, trucks, landfills, receptacles, water treatment plants, and rivers. They will be giant clocks and thermometers of our age that will tell the time and health of the air, the earth and the water. They will be utterly ambitious –our public cathedrals. For if we are to survive, they will be our symbols of survival.”
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
At this juncture, with regards to the phenomena of the waste stream we humans have created, as we burst at the seams it seems we are called to think out of the box. Even if “thinking out of the box” means pivoting back to basics when people actually repaired things in hopes that the repair economy will penetrate the concept of planned obsolescence or implementing an innovative business recycling glass to make something useful again, or putting energy into a food waste diversion program as we currently are doing.
The Artist-in-Residence and Educational Program (A.I.R.E) is a program that offers opportunities to create out of the box. The selected artist receives a stipend, an end of residency exhibit and gleaning rights on the dumping floor for materials to create work which in turn brings attention to the issues of our waste in a more creative and impactful way.
2024 A.I.R.E artist Margie McDonald successfully finished her semester bestowing an amazing sculpture the “Long tailed Anthropod”: a creature made from wood pieces found and collected then torched (a preservation and distress process called “Shou sugi ban”). The sculpture is securely fastened to its permanent habitat – the front of the metal trailer that is used for the artist and shared as the break room in the winter for the Cascade Connection team. Margie also is showing some pieces that were made from or inspired by her time at the transfer station at the Grover Gallery- January and February.
Now housed under the Beyond Waste Action group of Local 20/20 and boasting its third year of hosting an artist, this grass roots program’s nimble committee is accepting applications for the 2025 term which generally last from June through August. Donations to cover the sustainable budget of about $2,400 where $2,000 goes to the artist and the rest is used for additional materials, reception expenses, gifts for the staff and an orientation dinner, and do not impinge on Solid Waste financial resources.
The Sandbox
Working in collaboration with the crew at Transfer Station is a privilege and a joy. Considering ever tightening budgets, a way outdated facility, a growing population with growing needs, I have witnessed firsthand the hard work, care and resilience that the transfer station crew has shown in these past four years since the program’s inception. So please play nice in the sandbox and tip your hat to these folks who are doing their best while trying to be safe dealing with mounds of our daily discards!
For more information go to: aireatthetransferstation.com.
To request an application: tracy@aireatthetransferstation.com
To make a donation to A.I.R.E. go to l2020.org/donate/
(please note that it is for the A.I.R.E. program).
For more information on waste handling and recycling: jeffersoncountysolidwaste.com
Multidisciplinary artist, Tracy Grisman leads the AIRE team and is a member of the Local 20/20 Beyond Waste Action group and is a SWAC member.
