Heron Arts is pleased to present Recology Retrospective, a collaborative exhibition highlighting the following artists that participated in Recology’s Artist in Residence (AIR) program: Bryan Keith Thomas, Chad Hasegawa, Elizabeth Estrada, Ferris Plock, Hughen/Starkweather, Jake Shapiro, James Gouldthorpe, Jenny Odell, Julia Goodman, Laurel Roth Hope, Mansur Nurullah, Nasim Moghadam, Nemo Gould, and Susan Leibovitz Steinman. The opening reception is July 11th, 2026, from 6-9 pm. It is free and open to the public. The exhibition will be on view by appointment only until August 21st.

Recology Retrospective reflects the program’s commitment to environmental education, resource conservation, and supporting artists. Education has been central to the AIR Program since its founding over 35 years ago when artist and environmental activist Jo Hanson proposed the idea of an artist residency at Recology. As curbside recycling programs were expanding, Recology recognized that art could help engage people in conversations about conservation and our shared responsibility to protect natural resources. Since then, the AIR Program and our educational tours have connected hundreds of thousands of children and adults to these ideas through art. Each summer, applications are accepted from professional and college/university student artists with typically around 200 artists applying for nine residencies. Through a competitive review process, six professional artists and three student artists are selected each year.

The four-month residency is both demanding and transformative. Artists scavenge materials from the Public Reuse and Recycling Area, prepare and clean materials, engage with visitors, and create new work for a culminating exhibition. While many residents have never worked with reclaimed materials before, the experience often changes both their artistic practice and their perspective on waste and consumption.

The works featured in this exhibition span a wide range of media, including sculpture, textiles, painting, paper-based works, installation, research-driven projects, and more. Representing artists from across the program’s history, the exhibition includes both professional and student artists, from early residents to more recent participants.

While resource conservation serves as the program’s underlying theme, each artist brings their own areas of inquiry to the residency, exploring subjects ranging from family narratives and social issues to personal reflection and identity. At its core, the Recology Artist in Residence Program demonstrates that art can inspire us to look differently at the materials we discard, deepen our understanding of environmental responsibility, and imagine new possibilities for the future. Collaborations like this are essential to reaching more audiences and we are grateful for the opportunity to show work at Heron Arts.

– Deborah Munk, AIR Manager

ARTIST BIOS

Bryan Keith Thomas was born in Dyersburg, Tennessee, and received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He lives in Oakland, California, and works as a Professor of Fine Art in Painting and Drawing and Critical Ethnic Studies at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

His works of art, through the lens of installation and mixed media, celebrate the Black experience through its historic symbols: cotton, roses, Church fans, Holy Bibles, and the African American image. He includes nuances of Asia, India, and Africa as a single community. The mirrors in my works, inspired by the Minkisi- Power figures and nail fetishes from central Africa, symbolize desire, mortality, and ancestral protection. The nails hold the energy of a prayer request. The small cloth bags (Heirloom Bags) adorning multiple paintings bear spiritual and physical memories. In addition, the bags contain seeds, money, crystals, hair, prayer cloths, and more.

Thomas received the "White House Honor" as a guest of First Lady Laura Bush for his work with the Art in Embassies Program. His work has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally, including at Art Basel (Miami, FL), de Young Museum (San Francisco, CA), Oakland Museum of California, Gallery Guichard (Chicago, IL), ArtJaz Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), E&S Gallery (Louisville, KY), American Embassy (Dakar, Senegal), and Du Sable Museum (Chicago, IL). His paintings are in private and public collections worldwide.

Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Chad Hasegawa was enthralled with graffiti and the art of the Mission School. He moved to San Francisco in 2000 and received a BFA in advertising from the Academy of Art University. He worked for top agencies, including Venables Bell & Partners and Goodby Silverstein & Partners. After leaving advertising, he concentrated on creating murals on the streets, and painting canvases for both commercial and non-profit gallery exhibitions. He quickly gained recognition for his bold and colorful latex paint brush strokes that pushed the boundaries of public art.

Elizabeth Estrada is a multidisciplinary artist working between painting, poetry, sculpture, performance, and installation, often intertwining these mediums to explore themes of spirituality and body politics, alongside the internal and external processes of decay and regrowth. She is interested in how socialization shapes our somatic, emotional, and psychological experiences. Recently, her work has focused on assemblage and collage/decollage, incorporating natural and found materials.

Her work has been exhibited at SOMArts, Art Share LA, CCA Playspace Gallery, and has performed poetry at Beyond Baroque, Tamarack, 120710 Gallery, Abrams Claghorn Gallery, among others. Currently residing in the Bay Area, she recently completed a bachelor’s degree in Art Practice and Creative Writing at UC Berkeley and was an artist in residence with Recology SF.

Ferris Plock is a San Francisco-based artist who lives within the city with his wife, Kelly Tunstall (Plock’s partner in the artistic duo KeFe), and son Brixton. Plock brings a dedicated focus to his work that is paired with a wild sense of originality. Through a variety of mediums including acrylic, watercolor, spray paint, India ink, gold or silver leaf, and collage Plock creates highly detailed works, often character-based paintings on wood panel, that combine contemporary pop culture with the aesthetic of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblocks. Widely-accomplished and with a diverse range of artistic interests, Plock has created illustrations for many high-profile clients, has been involved in solo and group exhibitions both nationally and abroad, and also served as the 2010 SF Recology Artist in Resident.

Hughen/Starkweather solo exhibitions include Asian Art Museum, Bolinas Museum, Public Policy Institute of California, and University of San Francisco. Honors include residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts, Recology, Skowhegan, Space Program, Ucross, and Yaddo, and a San Francisco Individual Artists Grant. Their work is in the permanent collection of the Asian Art Museum San Francisco, as well as public and private collections worldwide, including a large-scale commission by SFMOMA for the Chase Center in San Francisco. Starkweather received an MFA at Tyler School of Art; Hughen received an MFA at UC Berkeley.

Jake Shapiro (b. 1992) was born, raised and lives in Berkeley, CA. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Physiology from the University of Colorado and a Masters in Fine Arts from San Francisco State University. Shapiro has exhibited throughout the Bay Area including exhibitions at Small Works Projects, San Francisco, CA; Metal Haus Gallery, Oakland, CA; Casemore Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Erica Tanov, Berkeley, CA; SOMArts, San Francisco, CA; San Francisco State Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Shapiro participated in the residency at Recology San Francisco, and was awarded a Murphy Cadogan Award, the Christine Tamblyn Memorial Scholarship, and the Martin Wong Painting/Drawing scholarship.

James Gouldthorpe received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland and studied painting at the Parson’s School of Design in Paris, France. He received his MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California. Gouldthorpe has always been drawn to narrative, his painted installations explore the boundaries between literature, science and visual art filling walls with hundreds of paintings, layered and edited until a compelling narrative begins to form. The viewer is encouraged to linger and experience the painting like a film or novel. Other than painting he often works with video, sound, photography and sculpture. Gouldthorpe has shown his work nationally and internationally, He has been artist–in-residence program at The Prelinger Library, Recology at the San Francisco Dump, Willapa Bay Artist Residency in Washington State and he was a Lucas Fellow in residence at theMontalvo Art Center. A selection of his series, Covid Artifacts, created during the pandemic, was featured in Close To Home, Creativity in Crisis at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is currently working on Accelerant, a large painting installation to be featured at Bane gallery in August 2026.

Jenny Odell
I am a writer and artist based in Oakland, California. My work generally involves acts of close observation, whether it's birdwatching, collecting screen shots, researching trash, or trying to parse bizarre forms of e-commerce. In general, I am searching for frameworks that allow us to perceive something new about everyday reality.

My first book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, was published in 2019, and my second book, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, was published in 2023. I am currently working on a book about repair. You can see my other writing here.

My visual work has been exhibited at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, the New York Public Library, the Marjorie Barrick Museum (Las Vegas), Les Rencontres D'Arles, Fotomuseum Antwerpen, Fotomuseum Winterthur, La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), the Lishui Photography Festival (China), and apexart (NY). I have been an artist in residence at Recology SF (the dump), the San Francisco Planning Department, the Internet Archive, and the Montalvo Arts Center. From 2013 to 2021, I taught digital art at Stanford University.

Julia Goodman works at the intersection of papermaking, textiles, sculpture, and painting. Her work is included in the collections of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, DePaul Art Museum, Recology San Francisco, and Google. Goodman has a forthcoming solo exhibition at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art and recent exhibitions include the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, DePaul Art Museum, Poetry Foundation, Saint Mary’s College, CCA Hubbell Street Gallery, and Berkeley Art Center. Her residencies include JB Blunk Residency, Recology SF, Creativity Explored, Salina Art Center, and The Space Program. In 2020 she was selected for the 2020 Women to Watch Award by the San Francisco Advocacy for the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Goodman earned an MFA from California College of the Arts and a BA in International Relations and Peace & Justice Studies from Tufts University. In between she studied art at Santa Monica College. In 2015-2016, she was a Full Time Visiting Lecturer, Interdisciplinary MFA Program in Book and Paper Arts, Columbia College Chicago. Goodman teaches Papermaking: From Fiber to Paper at CCA and leads papermaking workshops throughout the Bay Area including Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive, Exploratorium, Creative Growth, and NIAD. She lives in the Bay Area with artist Michael Hall and their family.

Laurel Roth Hope lives and works in Northern California. Prior to becoming a full-time, self-taught artist she worked as a park ranger and in natural resource conservation. These professional experiences influenced her current work, which centers on the human manipulation of and intervention into the natural world and the choices we must make everyday between our individual desires and the well being of the world at large. Hope was a 2025 SF Recology AIR Artist in Residence, a 2020 Space Program SF Resident Artist, a 2017 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, and a 2016 Resident Artist with the Kohler Arts/Industry program in Wisconsin. In 2013 she and her sometime collaborator, Andy Diaz Hope, completed a year-long Fellowship at the de Young Museum of San Francisco examining the history of human cooperation through architecture. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the Mint Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, 21C Museum, the Zabludowics Collection, the Progressive Collection, and the Ripley’s Museum of Hollywood, among others. She is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery of San Francisco.

Mansur Nurullah (b. Chicago, 1972) is a San Francisco-based artist who - building on the legacies of African-American quilt makers - creates intricate, semi-abstract works that process and memorialize personal, familial, and community memories and histories. Something of emotional landscapes, these hanging, quilted sculptures are made from discarded clothing, scrapped furniture, fallen road signs, upholstery samples, and disassembled shoes and handbags. Central to the works’ narratives are the artist’s experiences counseling formerly incarcerated youth. These pieces map the interior and exterior landscapes that help Nurullah find his place in the world. “The creation of these works is an opportunity to reflect upon problems and figure out solutions - which often appear as pathways - and are an opportunity for the discovery of new openings and possibilities.”

In addition to his art practice, Mansur Nurullah works with suspended and expelled youth as a counselor in the San Francisco public schools. He has been awarded residencies with Recology (San Francisco) and, through the San Francisco Arts Commission, the San Francisco Planning Department. Nurullah is an affiliate artist at Minnesota Street Projects. He lives and works in San Francisco.

Self-described “Chairman of the Hoard” Nemo Gould is a master accumulator, of both materials and building techniques alike. His Oakland studio is a veritable museum of old objects and technology which he blends into his signature style of kinetic sculpture. His work pushes the limits of found object art and challenges the viewer to experience art through interaction and experience. Gould received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1998, and his MFA in sculpture from U.C. Berkeley in 2000. His work is featured in museums and collections throughout the U.S. and abroad.

Artist Susan Leibovitz Steinman creates large scale public installations with multiple stakeholder participation to address ecological, social and economic concerns and community-voiced needs. Based in CA, she is an “itinerant social sculptor,” who travels globally to create street front, temporal, improvisational, performative artworks. Her EOE Projects (equal opportunity eating) model low cost green techniques and social strategies on public land for public use, food rights, natural asset protection, bioremediation, ecological revitalization and tourism for clean local survival.

Recology Artist in Residence Program

The Recology San Francisco Artist in Residence (AIR) Program is an art and education initiative that supports Bay Area artists. As part of the Sustainability Education Program, the four-month residency provides a rich and immersive environment for artists to develop their practice while deeply engaging with sustainability and community outreach.

Since 1990, over 190 professional artists and 60 student artists from local universities and colleges have completed residencies. These emerging, mid-career, and established artists have worked across disciplines—including new media, video, painting, photography, performance, sculpture, and installation—to explore a wide range of topics.

The artist studios are located at the San Francisco Recycling and Transfer Center—a 47-acre facility that includes multiple recycling operations. Artists source materials for their artwork from the Public Reuse and Recycling Area, affectionately known as “the dump,” and paint from the Household Hazardous Waste Facility. Throughout the residency, artists speak to groups of students and adults who visit the artists’ studios as they tour the company’s recycling and composting operations. These interactions create meaningful opportunities to highlight the transformative potential of creative reuse.

At the conclusion of each residency, Recology hosts a public exhibition and artist talk which draws hundreds of guests to the studios. Artists contribute one to three works made during their residency to Recology AIR’s permanent collection. Artworks from this collection are frequently curated into off-site exhibitions at galleries and public venues that serve to promote the artists, recycling, and reuse.

Recology AIR fosters the conservation of natural resources by offering artists the time, space, and materials to create meaningful works. Through this program, artists inspire new perspectives on sustainability by educating thousands of individuals each year about the importance of environmental stewardship.