In 1970, to signal the first Earth Day, the young New York architect and artist Gordon Matta Clark constructed a temporary installation called 'Garbage Wall', a construction of cement, wire mesh and debris collected from the streets of the city. It was at once a witty critique of a wasteful society, a challenge to its mania for building, and an object of beauty that called on the community to become more engaged with its environment. In the years since, as its fame has grown, the wall has been re-created a number of times by museums as part of exhibitions of the artist's work.

As an homage to this pioneering work of environmental art and activism, the first Ojai Art Festival, which is built around the theme of art and waste, has constructed a unique recollection of Matta Clark's legendary installation, in the form of a Garbage Tower erected alongside the town's busiest street. Realized with the agreement and advice of the artist's estate, and using the same materials and techniques as the original, Garbage Tower was built in a single day, using trashed, obsolete and castoff objects collected by local children. Positioned in the forecourt of Ojai's MOB Shop, 110 W Ojai Ave, it is - like Matta Clark's first provocative installation - something encountered by chance, surprising, perhaps shocking and gradually entrancing the passer by.

The construction was done by Greg Prinz, one of the owners of The MOB Shop, the world's hippest and best designed bike shop, with assistance from the Ojai community. They are adjacent to the Ojai Art Museum right on the main street of downtown Ojai. Greg has great building skills and a brilliant set of eyes for design, so we certainly do have something amazing. Greg Prinz grew up in small town Texas. Life in the country with modest upbringings made him resourceful and helped him develop a capacity for problem solving. He built, broke and rebuilt most of what he had and the bicycle was his usual project of choice. This desire to build led him to an engineering career with a degree from Texas A&M University. He drives a biodiesel vehicle around Ojai when he isn't on a bike.

November 7 2013: A special film screening at the Pollock Theatre with introductory lecture by Jessamyn Fiore: Gordon Matta-Clark

In her presentation, curator and writer Jessamyn Fiore, will provide a rich foreground to the filmic works of Gordon Matta-Clark, understood within the context of the artistic community that surrounded his relational practices in the early 1970's. Preceding Fiore's 5pm lecture at the Pollock Theatre, a public conversation about the Matta-Clark archives and his artistic genetics and processes will take place with Jessamyn Fiore and Nicholas Olsberg, independent curator and advisor to the Matta-Clark Estate at the McCune Conference Center at the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center from 2:30-4pm. Tell me more ››