‘Trash Furniture’

Los Angeles “trash furniture” artist Sam Verts has made a coffee table from 3,225 metal bottle caps. A lamp from eight Italian tomato cans. And a mirror frame using five rows of wine corks arranged in a herringbone pattern . . . among other strange and beautiful things.

Now Verts, whose work was exhibited this spring at the Baltimore gallery Art and Architectural Design, has decided to take his recycling projects one step further. For his next collection of one-of-a-kind furnishings (the last featured everything from $500 lamps to a $7,900 tin-can console), he is venturing into double recycling.

Working chiefly with paperboard--that stiff, gray/brown paper used to make such things as cereal boxes and shoe boxes, the designer is doing a series of decorative frames, using small areas of the boxes.

“In America, the product packaging is designed to attract your attention. I’m sort of cutting up the boxes and getting all these lively colors and making a mosaic out of them. These materials are attractive and sturdy. Why throw them out?” says Verts, who also has designed sets for film directors Franco Zeffirelli and Luchino Visconti.

His furniture is “practical, not just decorative,” he adds. “You can stand on the tables and jump up and down if you want to. I wanted to awaken people to the vast waste that we’re carrying on.”

Kickoff Class

For six years, Cheryl “the ultimate football widow” Smith taught her “Football for Women” clinic at the University of Arizona, averaging about 350 female attendees per season. Now that her husband, Larry Smith, is USC’s football coach, she’s scheduled to offer the clinic at USC’s Norris Theater each Tuesday in September from 10 a.m. to noon.

“For a lot of women who get tagged along for a Saturday afternoon football game, it’s really a drag. If they can understand the ins and outs of game techniques--and learn about the football life style--they can have fun and enjoy the games,” Smith maintains.

Married for 23 years, Smith claims she “learned a long time ago that football was going to be a way of life in our family. And I decided Larry was worth it. Very often I have men enroll their wives in the class and I’ve had them tell me after it was over that the class really saved their marriages. Their wives had such a hang-up about football and were so tired of Saturday afternoons at the games and Sunday afternoon and Monday night in front of the TV.”

Fee for the clinic is $60, which includes parking costs and a luncheon at the fourth session. Both basics and finer points of the game are covered.

“I always like to think we teach the women something their husbands may not know,” she explains. “We teach ‘em enough to be dangerous.”