'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)


May 21, 2003