Story by Oriana Turley and Photos by Caroline McCarty

Missoula artist Charlie Koelling gives garbage a respectful afterlife.

PBR in hand, Charlie Koelling sat on the only couch in his living room. “I am not very good at this interview stuff,” he said. He kicked his bare feet up on two Asian-style floor cushions and took a sip of his beer. Koelling, an artist out of Missoula, MT, recently founded a new recycled art and design business by the name of Garbage Pale Designs. 

 “I think it is bogus to think you need to go out and buy new materials to make quality stuff,” he said. “There is shit everywhere that you can make [art] out of and reuse. Take things out of junk piles and make it into something somebody wants.”

Koelling takes apart a bike frame for a new project.

"Take things out of junk piles and make it into something somebody wants,” says Koelling.

Koelling is originally from East Texas and used to work in the frigid oil and natural gas fields of Wyoming. Not exactly the blueprint for a sustainable artist, but Koelling said he has always liked making sculptures and art out of whatever he could find. “I was just trying to make new toys to play with, and sometimes I really had a vision in my head of what I wanted to create,” he said. “This just carried on as I grew up.”

The concept of a recycled-material art business was stewed up during a trip to Southeast Asia this past winter. “We were seeing the burning, heaping piles of trash everywhere, talking a lot about the waste of it all,” he said. He saw a lot of old objects reused to create knickknack’s and art pieces in the markets of Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. “I started thinking a lot about garbage and art and how to put the two together,” he said. Koelling said he uses “found objects” as a starting point for most of his pieces. A welder by trade, Koelling seeks out unusual pieces of scrap metal to use either as a canvass, as a frame, or just a garnish to his work. He also uses wood, old bike parts and wire.

Some of Koelling's recent work is inspired by the cultures of Southeast Asia

“I usually find the different materials then I start making stuff,” he said. “By seeing which found objects I am going to put together first, because of size, texture or some other reason I can start to put [the finished product] together in my head.”

Though he has a few large-scale decorative ranch gates and handrail jobs in his portfolio, Koelling said he is trying to move away from Western art themes and toward more modern, abstract themes. “I find that living in Montana, people tend to want Western art, which I have made some of, but I am trying to make more modern, urban- kind of street-style designs,” he said. 

With metal being the signature element to his work, Koelling is able to build on his pieces and layer materials to create a three-dimentional, industrial effect. A welder by trade, Koelling admits he only really started painting his last year in the Fine Arts program at The University of Montana.

Garbage Pale Designs

“I went through a long phase of making large outdoor sculptures,” he said. “I got tired of making such big things that I had to hire trailers to pull around. Now I am painting a lot more.” Koelling said he mainly uses scraps of wood and metal to paint on. In the last few months he has also been cutting out stencils to use on his paintings. “Most recently I have been stenciling more because I am a pretty slow painter and a pretty quick spray painter,” he said. “ I am trying to make a more modern, urban kind of street-style graffiti designs.” 

Koelling said the street-style designs of the locals in Bangkok impressed him. “They had a lot of movement in their paintings, bold colors, iconic subjects from their culture,” he said. From buddha’s to boom boxes, Koelling has created a collection of art pieces that are earthy, flashy, industrial and sustainable all at once. He has merged his Montana workingman sense with eastern influences to create a new evolution of sustainable artistic expression. 

“Everything that I have done has gotten me to where I am at,” he said. “I just like to make art out of whatever I can find. I think it’s good, you know, to turn garbage into sweet stuff.”

Check out his website at www.garbagepaledesigns.com to see more.