What to do with your garbage during the Toronto garbage strike?

 As the Toronto city  indoor and outdoor workers strike continue into the third weeks and without garbage pick up for many had been a great inconvenience.  However this has no effect on me because I haven’t produced any, in fact I had been selling mine for money I been even picking up some on my way to my studio.

I compost, recycle, reduce and reuse and often produced so little garbage per week. Every month I only have a  small shopping bag size of garbage. Toronto being a wealthy city, I had found items in the garbage they are perfectly useable

 I rescued many pieces of furniture from the garbage and hand-painted into functional and colorful art furniture.  I had finished my studio with furniture I found around where I work. One was a chair from the well know Queen Street west watering hole: the “Beverley Tavern” but since closed in 2003.  Another treasure was part of a desk once to belong to writer Pierre Burton.( the desk was to big for me to keepas whole)  I also have a four-leaf screen its former life was a closet-door from Forest Hill which I painted a lush English garden scene on it. 

 Early this  year was used for a production of the opera “Cinderella” by the Toronto Opera Repertoire. During the performance when Cinderella changes from rag into her beautiful ball grown and my painted screen was at centre stage and was used for that transformation and received its five minutes of fame.. And some are even better than the ones I paid money for.  I pretty much finished my studio with furniture form discard with little cleaning and paint they become my one of kind items.   

 

Being an artist and born in the third world, I see garbage as useful art supply; So far with this strike, I had been turned my garbage into art and sold them