'Casa Dulce'
Fri/23, Sanitary Fill
Company
IT WAS FIVE years ago when Nicole Elizabeth Repack (a.k.a.
Jocelyn Superstar 2003) met Isis Rodriguez (a.k.a. Little Miss Attitude)
at the Florida wall, a San Francisco graffiti site. They decided to
join forces all the better to shake up the art world and
of their many collaborative projects since, "Casa Dulce,"
at the Sanitary Fill Company, has been the most intense. During
their three-month Sanitary Fill residency, they transformed the studio
there into a faux living environment complete with dining room, bedroom,
and more, using almost exclusively recycled trash. You have to see it
to appreciate just how industrious they've been. Each household object,
from the baking pans to the toilet seat, is an incredibly intricate
piece of sculptural art that Repack and Rodriguez engraved, painted,
appliquéd, beaded, glittered, bejeweled, and otherwise labored
long hours over. A longtime participant in the Clarion Alley Mural Project,
Rodriguez has also shown at Yerba Buena Center and the San Jose Museum
of Art. Her work melds Hanna-Barbara-style cartooning with traditional
Mexican metal- and woodcraft. Repack is a self-described "mixed-media-process-oriented-femme-glam-gangster-rockstar-graffiti-installative-performance-punk-rock"
artist with an M.F.A. from San Francisco Art Institute. It might seem
unlikely these two would choose Martha Stewart for a role model, but
that's exactly what they claim: that Stewart's crafty, do-it-yourself
approach to home economics was the original inspiration for their Sanitary
Fill project. It's amazing to see the result and to realize all of the
good stuff that people throw away, but at least a few lucky bits have
fallen into Repack's and Rodriguez's capable hands, as opposed
to the rest of the trash (2,800 tons of it just a typical day's
haul at the dump) you'll pass on the way to their studio. 5-9 p.m.,
401 Tunnel, S.F. (415) 330-1414, www.norcalwaste.com.
(Lindsey Westbrook)