It just needs a little paint

Peter Schulberg is the kind of guy who can’t drive past an interesting pile of trash without wondering what treasures might lurk inside. He’s a gallery owner, film production veteran, writer and former student of architecture who turns piano keyboards into mirror frames, water skis into bookshelves and old vinyl records into clock faces.

Lately, Schulberg has been looking skyward for bigger, better source material. He’s just wrapped up a project that converts the flexible vinyl facing of discarded billboards into raw “canvases.”

Two dozen painters responded to Schulberg’s Internet newsgroup offers of free exposure -- indoors and out -- at DejaDesign Gallery, his West Pico Boulevard art gallery, in exchange for painting his extra-large reclaimed vinyl panels.

The artists had their choice of 8-foot or 4-foot square segments. Some requested the blank, reverse side, whereas others were drawn to some small element of type, swath of color or interesting design left by the digital imaging process that enlarges and transfers an advertisement.

Recycled materials have had a long tradition in folk art, fine art and even fashion, including Simon Rodia’s tile-shard Watts Towers, the wood-scrap collage sculptures of Louise Nevelson and the tablecloths-turned-couture of designer Magda Berliner.

Schulberg’s motivation was mostly ecological: Every square foot that’s converted into a painting is another square foot that’s not trucked to a landfill. And by his reckoning, tons of the heavy vinyl are dumped every day. (For the initial project, a donor “sympathetic to the fact that they end up in landfills” supplied discarded swaths.)

With the flexible vinyl’s origins in outdoor advertising, it was only fitting that the finished paintings would become outdoor art, so Schulberg hung a dozen of them on the walls of his warehouse-size building to test the material’s durability.

The test, which began in November, yielded more than he expected. The material has proved to be an inexpensive, highly adaptable surface that accepts a wide variety of paint. Like some kind of high-concept paint-strip test, none of the artworks has shown any sign of fading, flaking or wear, not even after weathering the winter rainstorms.

The outdoor art display is a kind of social experiment as well. The gallery’s walls and the artworks have remained free of graffiti, though neighboring businesses are regularly hit.

“A kid with a paintball gun could ruin the whole thing,” Schulberg says. He sees the project as not just recovering trash, but also recovering hope for a neighborhood that was heavily damaged in the 1992 riots. It also shows the power of art to enlighten and uplift spirits and communities, he says.

On Friday, the results of Schulberg’s experimental plunge into the intersection of creative recycling and fine, pop and folk art will officially open to the public with a show called “Off the Wall.” The entire group of 36 paintings will be displayed on the exterior and interior walls of the cavernous gallery. Some works attempt to update the Ben-Day dots of Pop art painter Roy Lichtenstein. Others look to continue the Impressionist experiments in texture and paint, or explore the creative reuse of everyday objects that’s common in folk art.

That Friday is Earth Day isn’t coincidental to the many messages the artists hope to send through their recycled and repainted works.

“Art shouldn’t be that precious,” Silver Lake painter Joy Mallari says. “It should be available to the public, to the community.”

Painter Melissa McNees was attracted to the size of the raw canvases, the ecological benefit and the public art aspect.

“I like the idea that everyone just driving along can see it. You don’t have to go into a museum,” she says.

Mallari’s partner, painter Mark Justiniani, was intrigued by the remnants of images on the vinyl surface.

“Knowing that the initial image was intended to sell, automatically that creates a conversation between the existing image” and what is added to it, he says.

One of Justiniani’s works features the billboard’s type “we make” beneath his painting of stern-faced men and women with arms interlocked. Justiniani allowed some of the orange-flecked pixelation to remain as background, whereas Mallari covered her panel with repeating images of a youth’s face as if captured in frames of film.

Justiniani and Mallari were particularly drawn to the project because they were veterans of a billboard art project in the Philippines. They like to work big, and they like public art.

“This medium is very liberating,” Mallari says. “You take away the formality of facing a white canvas.”

Artists and executives within the outdoor advertising industry have long recognized the potential of the vinyl as a foundation for paintings.

“It’s tough, it’s durable, and it’s great collage material,” says Sean Robertson, creative director of Viacom Outdoor, who in years past has painted his own artworks on the vinyl. The panels have an inspiring advantage -- they’re huge. “What artist doesn’t love the opportunity to have the biggest canvas in the world available to them?” His company has donated some used vinyl to community projects, but most efforts across the outdoor advertising industry are still minimal.

“It is not very reusable” for billboards, says Gordon Godel, director of operations at the Glendale plant of MetroMedia Technologies, a leading billboard manufacturer. His plant in a month can print 700 to 900 billboards, most of which can’t be reprinted into another crisp image.

MetroMedia’s method to print the flexible vinyl revolutionized the outdoor advertising industry when it was introduced more than 20 years ago. It replaced heavy, laboriously hand-painted plywood.

“I’m absolutely looking for better ways to reuse this stuff,” says Godel, who sells some to ranchers who use it for tarps.

Schulberg’s recycling solution uses about $10 of common building materials to mount and stretch the vinyl into a suitable alternative to artists’ canvas. He also created modular components that make larger works portable and, therefore, more practical for hanging. He has all kinds of ideas about promoting the vinyl -- renting finished paintings to businesses, giving raw panels to schools, setting up a working outdoor studio and more.

“The irony is that advertising companies are paying to dispose of this stuff, and at a certain point, it will save them money to give them to me,” Schulberg says.

Like they always say, what’s one man’s trash is another’s treasure.

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‘Off the Wall’

Where: DejaDesign Gallery, 4823 W. Pico Blvd., L.A.

When: Opening reception 7 to 11 p.m. Friday. Regular hours: 1 to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays until May 7; by appointment through May 14

Info: (323) 936-9525