Monday, July 30, 2012

Art at Texas Disposal Systems
Published in the Sun July 28, 2012




Back in high school nobody suspected that Chris Anderson was an artistic genius.  His experience with art was limited to a ceramics class at Colville High in northeastern Washington State where he enjoyed throwing a few pots on a potter’s wheel.  He also took metal shop.  The steel was less pliable than clay, but Chris gradually learned to mold it into useful items and tools.  When he graduated, he went to work in his dad’s shop building steel blades for snow plows.  But every spring when the snow melted his dad laid him off, so Chris took a job at an air conditioning coil plant where he expanded his repertoire to copper and aluminum.



Chris got a reputation for being clever with metal.  The people at Boise Plywood called him with a problem.  After all the plywood layers are spiralled off the giant logs they were left with skinny eight foot posts that they wanted to sell as fence posts.  Chris built them a giant pencil sharpener.

 

Chris had been making tools and parts out of steel for about 10 years when a rancher who catered to buffalo hunters asked him to make a steel buffalo skull to decorate his fancy gate.  Chris had never done any steel sculpture before but agreed to give it a try.  Not only did he manage a realistic skull, but he threw in some chrome plating to add some pizzazz.  From that moment, it was like the scales fell from his eyes.  Chris began to see creations in rusty pieces of steel where others saw only junk.  The ideas started coming one after another.  He made life size animals, bears, and a moose.  The Forest Service commissioned him to build a memorial to the Civilian Conservation Corps and Chris fashioned a six foot man building a stone wall.



Chris used scrap steel because he could get it for 25 cents a pound.  He didn’t care if it was a little rusty.  “You just clean it up and it’s good as new.”  Gradually he gave up snowplow blades and air conditioning coils and supported himself by displaying his creations at art shows.  His favorite show was the Safari Club International in Reno, Nevada.  It was there in 2011 that his life abruptly changed.



A Texan walked into the booth at the Reno show and eyed the big steel animals.  He casually mentioned that he owned a couple of scrap yards and a recycling business and was looking for a resident artist who could do big animals.  Chris and his wife had just built a new home in Washington, and weren’t that interested in relocating to a Texas scrap yard, so Chris didn’t pay too much attention to the suggestion.  But the Texan left his card.  Just for grins, Chris checked the website.



He discovered that Bob Gregory, CEO of Texas Disposal Systems, has some really big scrap yards and a really big recycling business.  He also really likes exotic wild animals, and in fact has over 2000 of them on the Exotic Game Ranch surrounding the TDS landfill.  Mr. Gregory invited Chris to come to Texas and look around.  When Chris got off the plane in Austin on an 80 degree February day, the former snowplow maker thought to himself, “Holy Mackerel, this ain’t too bad.”  He liked what he saw at the TDS facility, and he liked the Gregory family.  Mr. Gregory had mentioned that he might be interested in an elephant sculpture, so Chris went back home and secretly whipped up a stainless steel baby elephant head.  In March Chris came back with his wife to sell her on Texas and brought the baby elephant head to seal the deal with the Gregorys.  The offering worked, and Chris became the resident artist at TDS in November 2011.



It’s a good thing that Chris has a big shop, because the lion he is building now stands 16 feet high at the top of his mane.  All around the shop are the bent and damaged dumpsters that have completed their lives as trash receptacles and are about to be reborn as lion skin and claws.  Using springs and hinges, Chris plans to have the lion’s tail and mane wave gently with the passing breeze.  Scattered around the shop are other projects in various stages of completion:  a couple of gargantuan sunflowers whose heads rotate with the wind, a saguaro cactus fashioned from old rebar, a rhinocerous.



Already completed and on display in front of the TDS offices are a magnificent eagle nesting high up in a recycled steel tree and a hungry bear family raiding a bee hive in a tree.  Every steel leaf on the bears’ tree is cut from the side of an old dumpster and attached with a fishing swivel, fluttering and chiming with the breeze.  Chris is just getting started.  We can expect some really great things to come out of those old dumpsters.






4 comments:

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  2. I did some work for this guy Chris Anderson when he was contracted in for Texas Disposal Sytems as the residential artist. I got hired on through my highschool Ag Mechanics program and it was my first real job. Let me tell you this guy was an aboslute nightmare to work with. Any chance Chris Anderson got a opportunity to belittle me he did so. I was building a pumphouse and had made a honest mistake misreading some of the blueprints and he got extremely angry his face turned completely red and he ranted for about 10min on how I didn't know what I was doing, how I had wasted all of his time, the companies time and wasted the companies money. Mind you I was hired straight out of highschool with 0 experience and this was a job that I was specifically hired on to be "learning from" and gaining "experience"from. He later apologized and said it was because his back was hurting or something of that sort. It was very short lived and this type of behavior became to be a constant everyday thing for Chris. One morning I came in to work and he walks up to me and says "You can keep your damn Texas weather" completely unprovoked and out blue. He then went on a rant about how he hates Texas, the weather and how much better Washington (where he is from) is. This guy was also a serious micro manager I honestly dont know how he got any of his own work done because he would literally criticize my every move and task I did. Anytime I had questions and tried to ask him for help (which again I was hired to be learning and gaining experience from) he would say figure it out yourself or just completely ignore me. He also failed to inform me about the 2 15 min breaks that your legally righted for working a 40hr per week job until the 3rd or 4th month I was working there (Again this was my first job out of highschool and knew nothing of rights on the jobsite). Another time we were going to pick up some metal and he nearly crashed into a fence because he wasn't looking and then went on to tell me that it was my fault because I didn't inform him he was getting too close when he was the one who was driving! He also had a bad habit of snatching things out of my hands whenever he had a chance. It pretty much was an everyday thing that there would be some hassle working with him. When I finally had enough of him I put in my 2 weeks notice and tried to leave in a professional manner but he just laughed and said ok then go ahead and quit so I went ahead and walked out right on the spot. I wouldn't recommend anyone to partner up with Chris Anderson or ever to work for him. Im positive he wouldn't have treated me the way he did if I was older and his size. I hope this helps someone out who is think about hiring him or working for him.

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  3. Chris and his family were my neighbors, in Buda, Tx. He is very talented and his metal sculpture animals are very impressive!

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