20 Feb An Unexpected Canvas: Richmond Artists Beautify Trashcans



Photo essay, Denis Perez-Bravo

Richmond resident Casia Stepack says she wants people to realize that everyone is beautiful and should be proud of themselves – and she’s putting that message on the side of a city trash can in the form of a mosaic of a proud peacock.

“When people are surrounded by beauty it gives them a chance to get in touch with their own power,” Stepack said.

Stepack is one of many local residents who participated in a mosaic art workshop hosted by local artist Daud Abdullah at Unity Park earlier this month.

Abdullah runs Treasure Box Academy, a project that he hopes will help beautify the city, one trash can at a time. The payoff for the “academy” is two-fold: Richmond residents are able to create art and the city gets decorated trash cans.

Abdullah holds these free mosaic art workshops for public artists of all ages. He provides the material and teaches participants how to cut tiles and glass for their designs and adhere them to canvases. The mosaic canvases are then placed on existing trashcans throughout the city.

Online advertisements for the recent workshop at Unity Park included instructions to create a template of a design incorporating Richmond city’s motto, “Pride and Purpose.”

Richmond resident Bara Sapir participated in the workshop and designed her canvas with the spiritual symbol, the Hamsa Hand – a sign of divine protection.

Sapir created a ring of silver in the palm as the eye of the hand. She created the hand with shards of green and blue tiles — all of them having at least one circular edge. She then lined the outline of the hand with the circular edges and filled in the hand with random designs. The fingers were created from tiles of the same color range, but atop each finger Sapir placed a different color gemstone. Red, brown, green and white pieces lined the edges of the canvass to contrast the hand in the center.

Other participants designed their canvass to spell out phrases like “Keep Nature Beautiful” and “Richmond Pride.”

Abdullah said the mosaic art trashcans would most likely be placed around the neighborhoods of those who participated in the class. He said he has a list of trashcan areas in the city that are available to work on and he chooses which trashcans to work on according to participant’s addresses. Then city workers pick up bins and drop them off at his Richmond studio. Once they’re beautified, they are picked back up and returned to their original places.
Abdullah says he’s worked on about 70 trashcans around Richmond so far.

Sapir, native to New York, is new to Richmond and wanted to contribute to the community that has welcomed her. The trash can mosaic sessions, she said, are awesome.

“The best thing about the event is that I can give a part of myself to Richmond,” she said.