Archive for the ‘Articles & Publications’ Category

4/20/1997 - Artist lets transformed-trash sculptures do his talking. By Daniel de Vise - The San Diego Union Tribune

SAN DIEGO - Richard Hinger didn’t have much money when he started sculpting, so he used materials he could afford : garbage.”All the objects were trash,” Hinger recalled. “I take the simple soda can. It was like Warhol and his soup can.”

Ten years later, soda cans, old refrigerators and Styrofoam popcorn still form the core of Hinger’s work. He presented 15 pieces yesterday outside Horton Plaza, flanked by a team of teen-age apprentices who are learning his trashy trade.

“That’s a satellite dish,” said Rhiannon Roberts, 16, pointing to a sculpture that resembled an enormous, lumpy pie. “We used mortar to give texture.”

Pointing to another human-sized , she said “That stuff looks like gum, its that spray Styrofoam stuff.”

The exhibit called “Talkin’ Trash,” was conceived mostly by Hinger and assembled with help from about 40 students at Teen Quest, a San Diego High School for teens who are homeless or live with foster parents.

By immortalizing things that society discards , Hinger and his students have erected an artistic paradox - works of odd beauty rendered in filth.

A peice titled “Who Are We” is a refrigerator filled with waves of junk and computer circuitry, symbols of a wasteful society. “Don’t Dish Me”, built atop a satellite dish, is a surreal swirl of crushed plastic bottles, broken telephones and musical notes, all elements of a teen-age life.

“WallowWanda depicts a woman’s body rising from a trashcan. Hinger explained: “We walk through the park, and we see a lot of homeless sleeping there. Some people are just thrown away.”

The pieces have a molten , textured look and are bathed in vivid greens, blues, reds and oranges. They stood out against yesterday’s pale downtown landscape like color amid black and white.

“It’s kind of like something i’ve never seen before,” said Bill Ley, 53 of San Diego, who stopped to peruse the sculptures. “Who would have thought to pick up a bunch of trash and do something like this?”

The exhibit and it’s themes coincide neatly with today’s Earth Day celebration, which is expected to bring thousands of ecology minded celebrants to balboa Park for events starting at 10:00 am.

Hinger, 33, was born in Pennsylvania, the son of a Navy aviator. As a child, he lived in such diverse spots as Maine and Panama. He lives in Leucadia now and has been in San Diego for 15 years.

A self-taught artist, Hinger began sharing his work with children five years ago at the request of a school principal.

Rodney Goldenberg, principal of Vista Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, hired Hinger to repair some floor tile in his house and was intrigued by the young artist’s portfolio. He hired Hinger to work with his academy students.

Hinger has worked and volunteered at dozens of schools since then; he volunteers his services at Teen Quest school.

Hinger and his students plan to show the pieces nationally, with proceeds funding future lessons.

Hinger calls his work pop art and says most of it springs straight from his own head. “I’ve never studied anyone,” he said. I never wanted went through the books to see what everyone was doing.”

These days, Hinger leads his young students through local art galleries and books to learn the art history he largely avoided.

From what she’s seen, 16 -year-old Rhiannon considers the exhibit a success. “I would look at this stuff and be interested,” she said if I was in museum.”

2/22/1996 Turning Trash to Treasure -By Julie Arend - The Beach News

ENCINITAS - Local sculptor Richard Hinger has spent the past few years turning junk into art, and now he is busy teaching kids to do the same thing.

Hinger, whose art work has been featured on local television newscasts and newspapers, is best known for taking discarded items that would normally be clogging up our landfill space and using them for a purpose of artistic design.

By combining trash-bag treasures, such aluminum cans, plastic bottles and broken toys with mud and brightly colored paints, Hinger, who has been designing for the past seven years , is now sharing his unique art form with local youngsters throughout the county.

“When I was doing museum shows in Balboa Park, kids would run over to my sculptures because they’re bright, alive and colorful.” said Hinger, during a break from teaching his unique skill to seventh graders at Digueno Junior High School.

“What I’m trying to do with this program is help the kids feel important , and bring art back to the children. After all, art is for everyone, but it should be something meaningful that people can relate to,” said Hinger.

Hinger began his school program called “Environmental Sculpture”, at Vista Academy where students put together an 8′ x 4′ pyramid full of their own painted recyclables. Old shoes, cassette tapes and soda cans came together to form the monument that now stands in the Quad, and since then, Hinger has brought his “Trash Art” to schools from Poway to Rancho Sante Fe.

“Its really neat to make sculptures with trash,” said Marea Riedler, a seventh at Digueno Junior High School, who was busy plastering a rubber hand, fuzzy haired troll and Barbie doll as her friend, Megan Marshall, was working on her own sculpture nearby.

“This is not like any other art class I’ve ever taken,” Marshall added. “Its non/traditional, and you can’t really be instructed how to do this. You are basically on your own to create what you want to”.

Hinger has developed three levels of design for the classes that are offered as after-school programs or through accelerated programs within the school. The first level involves a 10″ x 12″ frame in which they incorporate their objects. The second level utilizes an egg carton as the centerpiece of a three dimensional sculpture, and the third level is the creating of a large permanent wall assemblage or free standing sculpture on campus.

The objects are brought together by a sea of Styrofoam packing peanuts, and held together by mud and paint.

Some creations take on political or environmental theme, and seem to resemble what an archaeologist in the year 2100 may dig up as a representation of life in the 20Th century.

“The kids really get into it ,” Hinger explanined . They create it themselves from their own stuff, and then take it home and show it to their families, and they are amazed that kindergartners and first graders are doing college level art.”

Hinger’s goal is to take his program to schools in other counties, states and even other countries.

“By doing this, I really give of myself and the feeling I get back from it is great. I want to reach out with this program to as many people as I can.”

2/16/1995 - Encinitas Sun - Found art is classroom fun when sculptor gives lessons - By Tim Grenda

For Leucadia artist , Richard Hinger, what you throw in your trash today could become a new work of art tommorrow.

Hinger, a self-taught artist, has made hundreds of “found art” sculptures of his own. He now also teaches his innovative and evironmentallly - friendly brand of sculpture in Ranco Santa Fe through a series of after-meetings held weekly at the Recreation Center.

Since beginning his Environmental Sculpture Inc. (E.S.I.) classes a year ago, Hinger has shown children at schools throughtout San Diego County how to take ordinary items such as cans, bottle tops and pens and transform them into beautiful sculpted works of art.

The practice of turning”trash” into art helps push kids past what they would normally be doing in a more traditional art class, Hinger said

“We’re teaching them college-level art at the elementary scholl level,” Hinger said. “It really helps with developing their self esteem.”

The students bring their own items from home which , when treated

2/12/1995 -Vista Press - Students use recycling in environmental sculpture -Robyn Walters

One man’s trash, is another man’s treasure.

But for the students at the Vista Academy of Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA), it’s the center of classroom discussions, thanks to one local artist willing to share his techniques.

Self/taught artist Richard J. Hinger, who specializes in art work using found objects, is donning a new hat these days to teach his skill to the younger generation.

Hinger is the co-founder Environmental Sculpture and took on three classes of students this past semester at VAPA . The culmination of the program included erecting a monument sculpture in the middle oh campus for all the children to enjoy.

“There is certain amount of self-importance and self -esteem children get when they learn to make something themselves. That is what art is all about,”said Hinger. I try to tell my students , not all of them will great artist’s, but they will be great at something if they stick with it.”

Hinger fell into teaching quite by accident. Last year while doing some tile repair work for VAPA’a Rodney Goldenberg, shared his portfolio of art work.

“I was totally in awe of what he’s done and asked if he wanted to get involved with kids,” Goldenberg said.

Not only was Hinger interested, but enthusiastic about the concept.

“I had done shows down in San Diego, but I wanted to do more,” Hinger said. “I basically started my own brand of sculpture eight years ago and was trying to think how I could get children into it because they were really responding to it at my shows..”

In his student “found object” workshops, Hinger teaches children to create a work of art with items found in their home or neighborhood.

“In the process of making a unique sculpture, the children’s eyes are opened to environment and how art can be used to express concern for it,” he said.

Hinger himself has created sculptures out of car parts, kitchen gadgets, hoses and trash, to name a few. He coordinates the efforts of Environmental Sculpture Inc. (E.S.I.) with Jacqueline Hunt and Laurie Seeman, both of whom have worked extensively with this fun new form of art.

In addition to teaching at VAPA, Hinger also instructs at Mission Meadows Elementary School, where students there put together a wall assemblage featuring two horse.

“Children love color and three-dimensions, I didn’t want to bring a piece of granite, hand out hammers and say go,” Hinger said. “Plus, art should be about the people and what’s going on in their lives.”

Hinger hopes to expand the program throughout all of San Diego County.

3/10/1991 - Revolt in Style - By Paul R. Wade

At the end of time after the earth has died from being brutally ravaged by man, there will be horrific remains of an existence built on corruption and greed. My sculptures are evidence that this nightmare is shockingly close. The world can return to its original beauty only if we act now. -Richard J. Hinger

Dolphins struggle - suddenly ensnared in a gill net along with a school of tuna. Any movement serves only to further entangle them. Many will crushed alive by the net reeling gears on the ship above.

A soldier stands erect, fresh from battle, wounds still bleeding. But will he ever see past the skeletons grappling before his eyes?

Pretty shells and sand dollars lie washed up on the sandy shore - alongside discarded rubber gloves, used syringes and other medical waste dumped thoughtlessly from a large offshore Navy ship. Not far away large pipes emerge from a sandstone cliff, oozing thick brown liquid into the sea.

Such are concerns of Richard Hinger a 27 - year old artist who actually uses garbage to construct his environmental sculptures, sculptures he calls Post Apocalyptic Visions. “There are some snide people who turn up their noses at my work because its made of trash,” he says.

Several years ago, searching for a way to express his environmental passions, Hinger impulsively turned toward sculpting as an outlet.”That’s the beauty of the heart,” Hinger said. “I just decided one day that I’m going to sculpt. I thought about painting and decided, Well the great masters, they can only say so much in two dimensions. ” I wanted something that was more real - and thick.”

Training is of no use to Hinger, who has taken only one class at Mira Costa College, and that in Career Preparation in Art. “It would be a waste for me to go to school. I almost don’t want to even look at other artists. Schools make clones of other people’s ideas and I don’t want to be influenced. I’ve always believed that it has to be pure. It has to be for me, from me.”

After collecting other people’s discarded junk, Hinger nails, solders, glues and wires the objects together. Hinger see’s almost every object as potential component of his art. Broken and scum-coated car nameplates lamenting the lack of quality and poor fiscal performance of this past American glory.

Hinger’s comment on the press is “Media MixUp.” A mass of twisted tubes emerging from a typewriter with colorful keys drives a TV screen that only flickers static. Crusty exhaust pipes rise from the piece, portraying the media as a complex factory. To Hinger this symbolizes the machinery of our regulated and censored press. The media is very , ” he observes. “Like during the war they were just showing all these PRO-war marches. They would never show people who were marching against the war. It just goes to show that you’re only seeing what they want you to see- not what’s truly going on.”

And in a touching tribute to a little girl he used to take care of, Hinger created a collage of items she left at his house: shoes, toys ,flowers and her little umbrella. “Her name was Summer, A beautiful blond girl. Her mom would always be out partying and I would have to watch her,” She wanted to be an artist. I am an artist, she’d say. I will always remember her.”

Hinger’s dark humor gleams through occasionally, as in his “Evaporation Bomb” pieces. Various piles of clothing lay empty on the ground, their occupants dissolved by the imaginary bomb.

Not greedy for money, Hinger refuses to sell his work. He wants to keep them together as a unit, for someday he plans to display his works in museums around the world. “But you have to know the right people to make it big,” says Hinger. “The art world is very controlled and it’s not necessarily what you are able to do that matters. I could build another Eiffel tower down the road and I wouldn’t get recognized for it unless the right people were contacted. It’s very political.”

But the future is looking bright for Hinger. He has been the subject of many newspaper and magazine articles and recently been in the spotlight of San Diego television Channel Eight and Ten. Although you may soon see his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art or displayed in installation downtown, he will stop sifting through the nearest pile of junk. pondering world problems and dreaming up his next Post Apocalyptic Vision.

Paul R. Wade

3/30/1991 - Times Advocate - The Art of Trash by Jennifer Weber

Richaed Hinger’s art is garbage.

Really.

The Encinitas resident makes sculptures from things lying along roadsides or what friends spot and pick up for him. The result is work that is startling, provocative and very dark - despite the bright colors the 27 - year old Hinger favors.

The soft spoken son of a Navy flight engineer who grew up in Panama and Maine call his art “aggressive.”

“I see a lot of things , and most people don’t see that sort of thing. So I shock people into seeing things so they’ll see it,” Hinger said.

His works are largely environmental commentaries.

He has a three - sculpture series, for instance, on toxic seepage. Each features at least one pipe with sewage spewing forth.

Another work called “Toxic Pain” is three heads inside the trunk of a palm tree. Each head is being eaten away by neon green raindrops.

Hinger admits to a broad pessimistic streak but says he tries not to live that way. Indeed, the apartment he shares with his girlfriend and two Siamese cats is roomy and bright. Sculptures - Hinger has just sold one - are in every corner, on every wall. They are his friends, and he likes having them around.

But his dark side is evident in the placard titled “Post Apocalyptic Visions” he props next to his work.

“At the end of time after the earth has died from being brutally ravaged by man, there will be horrific remains of an existence built on corruption and greed”, the card says.” My sculptures are evidence that this nightmare is shockingly close. The world can return to its original beauty only if we act now.”

Hinger can’t remember when he became an environmentalist. He credits the jungles of Panama and the woods of Maine as childhood influences on his sensibilities.

As he saw trash piling up around him. Hinger felt increasingly compelled to something about it. He avoided painting because he didn’t think he could say as much in two dimensions.

“I wanted something that was big and thick and deep and real,” he said.

A tile setter by profession, he read some books and without ever taking an art class, started collecting garbage two years ago and fashioning into sculpture. He has created 80 pieces since then.

His work doesn’t focus entirely on the environment. One of his works is called ” Media MixUp” and features a typewriter, a television and a radio - all covered with clay or plaster and paint, the common features of Hinger’s work. The message of “Media MixUp” is that the truth doesn’t always make it through the media.

Unlike many artist, Hinger doesn’t consider his own emotional state to be worth representing. The message, what Hinger calls the “shocking truth” is more important, he says.

Even so, he’ll sometimes look at his work and think: “Wow! What was going through me?”

Hinger continues to sift through garbage cans and watch the sides of the roads as he rides his bike through the beach cities.” I run out of materials before I run out of ideas,” he says.

12/28/1990 - Blade-Citizen - Artist molds Garbage into sculptures by Leslie Ridgeway

Artist molds Garbage into Sculptures

Leslie Ridgeway / Staff Writer

ENCINITAS - If an art critic looked at Richard Hinger’s work and called it garbage, he or she would only be half right.

The 27 - year old Encinitas resident creates sculptures from materials that most people would reserve for the trash can. Aerosol cans, Styrofoam and plastic juice containers all have a use for Hinger, who for the last two years has been building sculptures that not only are garbage, but also send a message about garbage.

“A lot of artist’s make stuff from their inner self,” said Hinger from the showroom of his duplex.”I’d rather provoke thought. There are a lot of serious issues, but most people don’t react well to facts and figures. They notice images though.”

Hinger’s images not only provoke thought , they provoke awe. He says he’s not a trained artist, and has spent the last two years building sculptures, waiting for the time when he has enough work to begin showing in galleries. He is featured in the library at Mira Costa in Cardiff, where he is enrolled in a class that he describes as a support group for artists who need to build their self-esteem as well as their portfolio.

Hinger, however, has no limit to his self esteem.

“Its a gamble to make something and show it to people, but I believe in myself,” he said, his direct gaze confirming what says. “Some of my friends told me I cant just call up a newspaper and ask them to interview me, but I think I can. People need to see my work.”

The work is astounding for someone who has only been at it for two years. Even his first pieces indicate a sure sense of color and organization. One piece is titled “Galactic Debris.” and is a dismantled computer in outrageously bright hues. A pair of sculptures features brightly painted clothing lying on a frame and is designed to illustrate the aftermath of a nuclear bomb blast.

One of the most disturbing is a torso and head of a mannequin that wears a soldier’s helmet. Blades of a fan protrude from the body, dripping red paint to symbolize the physical injuries suffered by soldiers. Skeletons hanging from under the helmet and circling the mannequin’s neck symbolize the emotional horrors they will always carry with him.

It’s not clear exactly what made Hinger start sculpting.

“When I was young, I spent some time with art , but I never took it seriously,” he said. “Art class was just a place I could go and be by myself, draw and create things. I never thought I had any talent.”

One day, Hinger, who lays tile for a living, decided it was time to do something that would remind people of him when he was gone. He wanted his work to have a message, and he though of what was important to him. The environment stood out.

So he found a type that not only gave a message about the environment, it used materials that pollute the environment. He started “slapping things together” and suddenly found himself looking at trash in a new light.

He gets help from friends and children in the neighborhood who are happy to help him find articles to incorporate into his sculpture. One youngster, who he calls , is particularly good about finding interesting things for him to use.

“Noah is gold,” he said. “He looks like Dennis the menace. He finds me really neat stuff. I can get a whole piece out of a little item he brought me.

Hinger, who has lived in Encinitas for eight years, is the son of a flight engineer who moved the family to many American cities and as far away as Panama. He saw everything from the stunning rain forests to the snow, trees and clean air of Maine and the grime and grit of big cities like Baltimore Md. This view helped establish an environmental consciousness in him, he said.

Hinger is now working on about five projects, but said he could do more and hopes someday he’ll be able to do only artwork. He also likes to spend time riding his mountain bike, playing basketball and singing with local bands. He said he’d like to performance art, and wants to tackle bronze sculpture eventually.

12/27/1990 - San Diego Union Tribune - Trash Art ‘Screams’ out on pollution By Michael Scott-Blair

Garbage heaps give rise to Encinitan’s ‘Beauteous’ works

Michael Scott-Blair /Staff Writer

Encinitas -Richard Hinger ran his fingers over the brightly painted collection of trash with the loving caress of an artist lost in his work.

“It’s beauteous, really,” he said. ” A little shocking at first, but strong. It screams out the dreadful things we are doing to our world. It’s not a pretty statement, but the problems aren’t pretty, either. I call it Sci-Fi Man.”

Between the Sci-Fi Man’s rigs, old automobile parts glowed with phosphorescent paint. A car’s distributor cap served as the heart, with spark plug wires snaking off to different parts of the body.

“It was one of my early works before I got involved in environmental themes.” Hinger said.

Around him, almost 50 mind-bending sculptures created from the trash heaps of the beach and neighborhood crowded his small apartment on the coastal bluff overlooking the ocean in Encinitas.

Huge”comment pieces,” up to 8 feet tall, reflect the problems of pollution - air, water, ocean and the human body.

“I cant stop doing this ,” he said. “Sometimes I do four a week. The ideas keep pouring out of my mind. I sometimes think I’ll run out of trash before I run out of ideas”.

Now he takes a class at Mira Costa College on how to prepare for a career in art, but he rejects artistic instruction. “I’ve always known my stuff was good, right from the start,” he said. “OK I’m a bit cocky about it, but people seem to like it. I know what I want to say and judging by what other people say , they’re hearing me. One person even called one of my pieces Picasso like.”

The neighborhhood kids bring him his raw material - old cans and bottles, shoes, hats, twisted pieces of metal, cogs, wheels, car seating, nails, handbags, tubing large and small.

A couple of his works are on display in the library at the Mira Costa campus, he said. He doesn’t want to sell, though it was nice when somebody recently bought a piece.

I’m more interested in displaying it all, getting it out where people can see it and think about what it says. Maybe it will encourage people to take action to save our environment,” he said.

Hanging on the wall in his apartment is “BioHazardous BeachFront,” a collection of hospital needles and surgical gloves gathered from the beach, mixed with sea shells and seaweed.

“It’s a sad statement. We cant go in the water without one corner of our mind being worried our safety. I’d like to get people angry enough to take action.” Hinger said.

In “Petrol Seascape, a puffer fish is entwined in an old piece of fish net with plastic bottles, old rope, cans and representations of birds - all covered in a realistic black , gooey-looking coating that brings the tragedy of Exxon Valdez into your living room,” he said.

Another ocean tragedy is reflected in “Incidental Kill,” a red blood drenched fishing net festooned with gill trapped dolphins, sharks, and string rays, all with a background of reproduced five - dollar bills.

“The trapped fish are the incidental victims of the lucrative tuna fishing industry in which gill nets are still used in some parts of the world,” Hinger said.

His “Galactic Debris”highlights space pollution, “Media MixUp” depicts information pollution, while “NetWork MindWork” has a massive broken and jumbled jigsaw pouring out of a television screen.

A stereo set is built into another tortured creation to depict noise pollution, yellowed lungs hang behind ribs made of flower planters below grinning plastic foam faces with huge cigarettes in their mouths to highlight the perils of smoking.

Born into a military family in Pennsylvania, Hinger spent his young life mainly on bases in Panama and Maine.

“As soon as I graduated from high school I hopped in the car and headed out to Oceanside where my brother was in the Marines on Camp Pendleton,” he said.

“I lay tile and do stone work. I love stone,” he said unconsciously sliding his hand over the smooth surface of a raw stone table he had just made.

Though he has spent only two untutored years at his sculptures, his demands to be looked at. Initially an affront to the eye and mind, his highly detailed work always carries a meaningful message.

Hinger includes other forms of social comment, such as anti-war statement in which a helmeted soldier cannot erase the dreadful images he has seen in battle from before his eyes. And there is “Rock and Roll Dream” a broken and decaying guitar reflecting the lost dreams of so many young performers who unsuccessfully seek fame and fortune in Hollywood.

A towering “Political Martyrdom” shows the monolithic Communist system, depicted as a huge complex machine that is supported at each level on the skeletons of people. “They all sacrificed themselves for an inanimate system which in the end didn’t work,” said Hinger.

Though Hinger’s works include many skeletons, skulls, death and destruction, they still manage to retain a whimsical mood. Even his “Armageddon” - a collection of trash and bodies- manages to include at its apex a single hand reaching out in a last, desperate gesture of hope.

Despite his somber themes and macabre presentations, Hinger is not some angry young rebel who is out of step with the world and eager to fight imagined wrongs. “Too many people in art today are on an ego trip, trying to tell people about their own little part of the world,” he said. “We don’t have time for that. The problems are too big and time is too short. We need to shout at people to get their attention on the problems that confront us all. ” I don’t think anyone will disagree with the problems I depict. I’m just making a call for action.”

Hinger now dreams of putting together a 50 -peice display of the effects of the ultimate bomb. He envisages a future “evaporation bomb” in which the only thing destroyed is the human body. Two pieces show half life size people lying on the ground with the bodies sucked out of their clothes which lie on the floor in the shape of a fallen person.

“I’d like to cover a huge wall with about 50 pieces like this,” said Hinger.

“It would be beauteous ,” he said, ” Truly Beauteous.”