Filed under: NEWS | Tags: 41 pounds, 41pounds.org, Art Dictrict of Chicago, Barbara Hashimoto, Junk Mail, pilsen, R. Productions, white trash
Last summer, artist Barbara Hashimoto asked a small business in Chicago to start collecting its junk mail. After 12 months of shredding, Hashimoto amassed more than 3,000 cubic feet of shredded material, all delivered by the U.S. Postal Service to this one small business.
Hashimoto’s labor-intensive process inspired a series of sculptures, installations, performances and collaborations (watch the video!) performed in Los Angeles and Chicago. The Chicago Arts District now sponsors Hashimoto’s junk mail exhibits. Come watch the process anytime through 45-foot floor-to-ceiling storefront windows. For night-time strolls, the exhibition is lit up. And mark your calendars now for the Junk Mail holiday reception in December!
Filed under: NEWS | Tags: 2nd Fridays, Archie Florcruz, Barbara Hashimoto: Junk Mail & White Trash, Chicago Arts District, Michael Kozien, Pelsin, Podmarjersky, R. Productions
Barbara Hashimoto: Junk Mail exhibition, having an eight-month run sponsored by The Chicago Arts District, and Podmarjersky, Inc., opens its gallery doors tonight, August 8, from 6 – 10 pm at 2003 S. Halsted Street, for the popular 2nd Friday Gallery Walk that has made the Arts District of East Pilsen famous in Chicago. The public is invited to take a walk in Hashimoto’s “Junk Mail Landscape,” an installation made from the 3,000 cubic feet of shredded junk mail that she collected for one year. Guest artist Michael Kozien’s suite of video and sound junk mail explorations are on view in the adjacent project room.
Other special events throughout the year include Junk Mail Interiors, Junk Mail Stories, and Junk Mail Xmas: whereby fake trees will be decorated using hand-shredded Christmas catalogues and other holiday-related junk mail.
JUNK MAIL FACTS: 100 million trees are cut down to produce junk mail annually. The majority of junk mail is produced from natural forests. In 2006, Americans received 77 billion pieces of junk mail. In 2006,
more than 15 million trees were cut down to produce the 1.8 billion pounds of undeliverable junk mail. (That’s above and beyond what was delivered.) 44% of the junk mail received goes unopened into the landfill.
Hashimoto’s sculpture, installation and performance work has been exhibited throughout the U.S., Japan, Europe, and the Middle East and is in more than 250 public and private collections including The
Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American Art, The Museum of Arts and Design, The Art Institute of Chicago’s Joan Flasch Collection, and The National Museum of Women in the Arts. She is currently Artist-in-Residence at BauerLatoza Studio, a multi-disciplinary architecture firm.
* Photo: Archie FlorCruz, www.whateverland.com
