Cabot Turns Trash Into Art

An exhibition of trash art by the Cabot House superintendent is tantalizing residents with visions of an Ecolympic triumph, but for now victory remains as remote as Harvard Yard for the distant dormitory.

For the past three days, visitors to Cabot have been met in the foyer by a display of garbage sculptures mounted on pedestals and walls. But dissenting murmurs of "Hygiene!" only provoke an affable greeting from Superintendent Gene Ketelholn, at whose hands the refuse of Massachussetts has been twisted and glued into meaningful shape since the early 1970's.

"I'm an archaeologist of our times" says Ketelhohn, a graduate of New York's High School of Music and Art, "This is immediate garbage: stuff that you see around you every day," he says, referring to the orange peels, tampon applicators and hospital bedpans that are the substance of his work.

Not just anyone can be a Gene Ketelhohn, though. He seems to have a nose for garbage. Composition for the sculptor is sometimes just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Ketelhohn says of his Revere Beach #1, "It was like God threw this thing up on the beach: stones and seaweed all done up with wire. All I had to do was put a frame on it."

But while trash may be divine in origin, Ketelhohn--who has been the Cabot superintendent since 1984--says he wishes there was less of it about. His exhibition is meant to rally students around Cabot's recycling program, and environmental issues in general. "The planet's going to hell in a handbasket," Ketelhohn says.

The exhibit--which will run for another two weeks--is part of a Cabot Ecolympic Committee drive to raise the ecological consciousness of the House. In addition to the Ketelhohn exhibit, committee members organized a vegetarian dinner at which speakers urged the House to go for Ecolympic gold and save the Earth.

"A lot of people are psyched about the idea of ecolympics now," says Jon C. Harrod '92, a member of the committee. "But whether that will lead people to take shorter showers and keep their windows closed remains to be seen."

But Harrod admits that the House remains "about in the middle" of the Ecolympic scoreboard. "We're not doing as well as we should be."

Ketelhohn's scuptures, however, seem to be an unqualified success. "I'm pleased to have everyone take it so seriously," the artist says. "People thought it was very intense."