‘TRASHSCANS’ Finding art in a throw-away culture

By GUY D’ASTOLFO

dastolfo@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

You can learn a lot from what a culture throws away.

And you also can turn it into art.

Ron Barron has done both in his new exhibition, “Trashscans,” which opens Sunday at the Butler Institute of American Art.

Barron, of Poland, combed the various neighborhoods of Manhattan last year, picking up interesting bits of litter. He saved everything — from broken glass to pigeon feathers — in plastic bags and returned them to his home studio.

There, he assembled the trash on a scanner to create works of art that also have an archaeological subtext.

For example, the area around Madison Square Garden produced trash that has a decidedly masculine flair. That piece is called “Broads, Brawn and Booze.”

The scan from the fashionable Madison Avenue district, known for its ultra-chic stores for women, is quite the opposite.

Not only does the litter in each piece represent the people of the neighborhood, but the arrangements also take on the area’s character.

In his trashscan for Lincoln Center — titled “Music Made Visible” — Barron uses a discarded show program to capture the look of the boxy buildings that once were common in the district. Other litter items waft above it, suggesting music emanating from the structure.

Barron carefully arranged the bits of litter on a scanner and then made each one into a print. The resulting pieces resemble everything from pop-art collages to abstracts.

Barron had become a familiar site to Manhattanites as he combed the sidewalks. He said only once or twice did passersby ask him what he was up to. One man who asked was not surprised to learn that Barron was an artist.

Manhattan, said Barron, is the perfect place for such a project; indeed, it might be the only place that has so many noteworthy yet distinct neighborhoods all in one place.

“I don’t know of any other city like New York,” said Barron.

The project got its start a few years ago, with Barron making forays into the city and returning home with his findings.

“It really is an archaeological dig without the digging,” he said. “The objective is serious — to find out what our culture is saying.”

To depict the heavily littered Washington Square Park, Barron made two scans, which he will display side-by-side. One is human trash, and the other is nature’s refuse: leaves and such.

“Trashscans” is being divided into two exhibitions of 27 works apiece. The first will run from Sunday to April 14; the second from April 15 to June 3.

After that, Barron has plans to get the exhibitions into a gallery in Manhattan.

He also has plans to mount a similar type of art project in Youngstown, which also will use found objects.

“Trashscans” is the first major art project for the 74-year-old Barron.

A graduate of Struthers High School, Barron got a bachelor’s degree in painting from Carnegie-Mellon University and a master’s degree in secondary art education from Youngstown State University.

He began his career as a teacher in North Lima and Boardman schools. In 1972, he became one of the founders of PBS television station WNEO in Kent. After an ensuing stint working at the Youngstown Board of Education, he and his wife moved to California in 1978, and later New York, to work in the entertainment business with singer Maureen McGovern, who is a Boardman native. He soon would become her manager and worked with her, and other musical acts, until the mid-’90s.

He moved to the picturesque Delaware River area of northeast Pennsylvania afterward to build furniture, but wound up working in real estate, selling high-end vacation homes in the wooded mountains.

He and his wife returned to the Mahoning Valley two years ago, and he has since taken up art as a full-time pursuit.

“I’m so happy to be starting my career at age 74,” he said. “I’m floating.”