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By Mechan 11: The Collector was installed in North Camden s Cramer Hill Neighborhood. The heart for the 15-foot-tall robot was designed by a Camden high school student and then fabricated by Tyler Fuqua Creations. (Emma Lee/WHYY)
The City of Camden spends more than $4 million a year cleaning up after illegal dumpers.
Some are so bold, they’ve carved out specific dumping grounds. There’s a place where mountains of old Christmas trees pile up. Other places have tons of kitchen and bathroom appliances or accumulate debris from housing construction and other garbage sources.
Camdenites have been fed up for a while. They see it as a combination of greed from the haulers that send their trash there and a form of urban insult.
Earth Day 2021: N.J. city fights illegal dumping with epic recycled outdoor art display.
Updated 6:56 AM;
A series of environmentally-conscious public art displays officially open Thursday on Camden, timed to coincide with Earth Day 2021.
Instillations include a giant black cat made of recycled car hoods, a turntable created with plastic bottles and face masks and a 17-foot-tall robot with a heart that beats for his planet.
Those and more are available to peruse throughout various Camden neighborhoods starting today after a year-long delay due to COVID-19.
The artwork, which is made from recycled materials, looks to spotlight the issue of illegal dumping. It’s a problem that costs taxpayers in the Camden County municipality more than $4 million a year, according to the city.
A New View preview: A look at large art installations in Camden
CAMDEN Commuters look out the windows as the PATCO Hi-Speedline trains rumble past a dead-end lot on Pershing Street in Camden s Whitman Park neighborhood. Usually, there s not much to see: Lines of rowhouses. One or two abandoned, boarded-up properties. A few cars. Some trash, dumped illegally. A giant black panther.
Wait.
It was. It is. Invincible Cat, by husband-and-wife artists Don Kennell and Lisa Adler, is 15,000 pounds of what used to be car hoods (56 of them, to be exact). And it s keeping watch on this vacant lot tucked inside a neighborhood along the Hi-Speedline not only to entertain riders, but also to call attention to a serious problem plaguing the City of Camden: illegal dumping and pollution.
Outdoor public art project unveiled in Camden
Updated 12:44 PM;
Today 9:55 AM Invincible Cat by Don Kennelll and Lisa Adler is one of six New View-Camden art installations sprinkled throughout the city.anewviewcamden.com
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On Earth Day, Thursday, April 22, the City of Camden, Cooper’s Ferry Partnership and the Rutgers-Camden Center for the Arts will unveil “A New View-Camden,” a half-year outdoor exhibit of six family-friendly public art projects located around the city.
Funded by a $1 million Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge grant, these large-scale, outdoor art installations specifically were designed to raise awareness about unlawful dumping of bulk waste in Camden, which costs taxpayers over $4 million annually. Among the “A New View” works will be a massive feline designed from repurposed automobiles, a 15-foot-tall steel trash collecting creature and a machine that utilizes mealworms to eat Styrofoam packaging from e-waste.