PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 11, Dec 1, 2005

Dumpster part of innovative art display

By Liz deAvila, News Bureau Intern

Click photo to enlarge "Untitled Project: Dumpster," by UI art and design professor Conrad Bakker, is on display through Dec. 10 outside Gallery 400 on the UI's Chicago campus.

Conrad Bakker’s latest project is bigger than a bread box, and looks like something that might be a repository for moldy bread … and all manner of other garbage.

“Untitled Project: Dumpster” is the UI art and design professor’s most recent wood sculpture in his “Untitled Projects” series. Six feet wide, 12 feet long, almost 4 feet tall and painted bright red-orange, the artwork sits outside Gallery 400 on the UI’s Chicago campus. Bakker said passers-by have mistaken his life-size sculpture for a real Dumpster and deposited trash in it.

The piece is part of the gallery exhibition “At the Edge: Innovative Art in Chicago” and will be on display through Dec. 10.

“This project (‘Dumpster’) emerged from extensive research of public spaces, ubiquitous objects, and perhaps, even my own Dumpster diving,” Bakker said. “The specific research involved paying attention to the way in which Dumpsters and roll-off containers occupy so many public spaces but are barely acknowledged.”

It took Bakker most of the the summer to create “Untitled Project: Dumpster,” which is made of 80 percent recycled wood retrieved from the recycling station at the Urbana campus’s Material Recovery Facility. Bakker said he became interested in building a large object that could sit in a public space for a certain amount of time and behave like a sculpture, but also function as an architectural marker. He also said he had a specific reason for choosing its loud color.

“The red-orange color was chosen in part because of its prior use in public sculpture, mostly (by) Alexander Calder,” Bakker said. “But also for the way that color could draw attention and still be an authentic Dumpster color.”

The sculpture itself is scheduled for disposal at the end of the show and will not be exhibited again, he said.

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