For one year, I collected drawings and words from the residents of Northeast Minneapolis in a series of informal engagement events.

I then selected fragments of these images and transferred them by stencil to the underside of 66 precast concrete recycling container lids. The castings, 96 in total, will weigh nearly 18,000 lbs. and be individually attached to a steel frame thirty feet off the ground.

The ubiquitous recycling container lid, ordinary and functional, not only represents the possibility of making something new from something old; it is also the single object that is handled by both City Public Works employees and residents.

A rubber mold was created from a City of Minneapolis-issue recycling container lid by American Artstone, an architectural concrete precaster in New Ulm, MN.

Collection Point will stand in front of the new City of Minneapolis Storage and Maintenance Facility. It is from this vast complex that the City’s fleet of vehicles is deployed daily to collect trash, recycling, organics, and snow.

Coming soon: photos of the second phase of installation! (For photos of phase 1, see this blog post.)

collection point, Minneapolis, public art