SIGHTS AROUND TOWN : Throwaway Art : Using castoffs as materials, the ‘reclamation aesthetic’ raises socio-ecological issues while stimulating the eye.

Wandering through the regional art scene, you’d think there was a conspiracy of junk artists underfoot. Kim Loucks’ “trash totems” are at the Palm Street Gallery. There’s a group show of “reclaimed creations” at the Frances Puccinelli Gallery. And Meg Karlin’s outlandish, oversize assemblages are flanking coffee patrons at Espresso Roma in Santa Barbara. The common thread is reclamation.

This is art made from materials salvaged--sometimes literally--from the garbage can, and sent straight to your conscience.

As an official movement, junk art--a descendant of the absurdist ideas of Dada--was primarily born of the ‘60s movement to examine and explode art conventions.

Just as Minimalism did away with narrative content in painting, artists using junk and other “found materials” subverted the idea that valid materials could be found only in art supply stores and rock quarries.

In the ‘90s, art that finds new uses for discarded materials carries implicit messages about resourcefulness and extracting beauty from what is cast off.

Puccinelli’s second annual “Reclaimed Creations” show, exhibiting the work of six California artists, illustrates the diverse uses, materials and attitudes possible. These artists all reclaim, but that’s where the similarity ends.

Approaching the lovely second-floor space in downtown Carpinteria, the visitor is greeted on the stairway landing by Michael Blaha’s loony, bright mask on a carom game board. Blaha’s piece is the loudest in the house, using brightly colored plastic fragments--numbering in the thousands in the epic “Polymer Grid.”

Los Angeles assemblage artist Qathryn Brehm fashions shrines to ‘60s pop-culture heroes, mainly soul groups celebrated in Joseph Cornell-ish vignette boxes on the cheap. Dick Marcus of Carmel scavenges for what he calls “road kills.” A disarming naivete exudes from “Whirligig”--made from a golf club, a hoe and metal scraps.

More elaborate constructions come from Santa Barbara artists with considerable experience in the genre.

Alver--whose pieces were seen in the “Art/Life” 10th-anniversary show at the Momentum last year--is handy using whatever’s around. But his results have a fine finish and a polished craftsmanship. They are functional-looking contraptions, without apparent function.

Assemblagist Elena Siff has long been a master of the miniature gesture. Her works demand to be eyed close-up and reward the viewer with a fascinating world of details. Her new pieces are exotically bejeweled, with materials from Nepal.

Perhaps the most oddly appealing pieces here are by Venturan Len Evans, self-proclaimed court artist of the “Post-Iron Age” aesthetic. The sculptor has found his niche by using an unlikely object--the rusty metal from discarded railroad-maintenance barrels. Evans’ shamanic characters and ritualistic masks involve a keen paradox, being at once primitive in appearance and postindustrial in origin.

That paradox is made ironically explicit with his canister of tin irises. Hanging over the doorway is “Power Propelled Wizard,” in which mock mysticism meets lawn-care machinery. This, according to the artist, is from the “late decadent period.” Good brainy fun is always welcome.

As of late, Venturan Kim Loucks’ name has become synonymous with trash. For the past year, Loucks has been working on a grant for her “Trash Totem Project,” displaying her wares at various spots in the area. The Palm Street exhibit, curated by Suzanne Bellah of Oxnard’s Carnegie Art Museum, gives Loucks’ project a full-scale showcase. It also adds historical perspective by showing the collages leading up to Loucks’ interest in the art of the found.

Unlike the artists at Puccinelli, Loucks doesn’t exactly transform detritus into more fanciful works. She “captures” trash for public contemplation, sequestering various categories of rubbish in large wooden cages that are treated with a colorful collage technique. One totem serves as an oversize planter. Another sits in a bed of concrete rubble.

She has obviously thought about trash. “Junk Mail Totem”--stuffed with crumpled, unwanted cards and letters--is the tallest piece, significantly. For “Cross Section Totem,” Loucks took a trip to the Simi Valley Landfill. The contents of “High School Totem” were gathered from one day’s tossables from Ventura High School.

Loucks’ objective has been to impose an aesthetic order on the chaos that is garbage. Her underlying theme involves the importance of refuse awareness and the shifting ethics of throwing stuff away. But basically, Loucks’ totems amount to entertaining kitsch, of a trashy sort.

For further adventures on the funk/junk art trail, head up the coast and drop in at Espresso Roma in Santa Barbara. Assemblage artist Meg Karlin has had her way with the place, scattering large constructions on the walls, the ceilings, the balcony and elsewhere. Karlin is also all over the map in terms of subject, her main focus being social and ecological ills.

“Power Play’s” high-tension wires are strung across the cafe, touching down to energize and/or zap child mannequins. In “Angel 5,” an angel/worker stands on a ladder and pulls the plug on an inflatable planet Earth.

Upstairs in the far corner, almost too subtle to notice, is “Behind Closed Doors.” Within the unassuming cabinet are tableaux of lab-animal torture. The work reminds us of one of those hard-to-face facts of life that persists as you read this.

Inevitably, artists who use “junk,” are making statements about socio-ecological issues. As “recycle/reduce/reuse” becomes a collective mantra, the cause of neo-junk art may extend beyond novelty status into the realm of political correctness.

It’s not unreasonable to speculate that artfully deployed junk could someday find its way onto finer living room walls everywhere.

* WHERE AND WHEN

“Reclaimed Creations 2,” at Frances Puccinelli Gallery, 888 Linden Ave., second floor, Carpinteria; through Sept. 21. “Trash Totems and Other Works” by Kim Loucks at Palm Street Gallery, 34 N. Palm St., Ventura; through Oct. 11. “Part II, Here and Now,” assemblages by Meg Karlin, at Espresso Roma Gallery, 728 State St., Santa Barbara; through Sept. 8.