I was not born. I was spilled.

Somewhere between a Caravaggio chiaroscuro and a knocked-over trash can, Garabaggio emerged: vermin with vision, prophet of polyester, patron saint of the discarded.

“My canvas is the dumpster. My pigment: grease stains and the glow of a streetlight on aluminum cans. Where others see refuse, I see relics. Where others wrinkle their noses, I bow my head.”

🦝🎨 The Movement: Post-Consumer Baroque

I call my practice Post-Consumer Baroque. Civilization produces endless discarded artifacts: the wrappers, the bags, the chairs left at the curb with one leg shorter than the others. And these are the still life objects of our age. The Dutch masters painted skulls and rotting fruit. I paint dumpsters and wilted lettuce. The tradition continues.

I wield chiaroscuro and consumer detritus with equal devotion. I sanctify the low, dumpsters, plastic bags, and fast-food remains, until they glow like saints. My exhibitions have forced viewers to crunch through littered floors while sipping wine from gas-station cups.

The Origin

I trained in classical painting. The details are, admittedly, complicated. There was a man who once restored church ceilings. There were books: many of them from the Goodwill on Hastings, their spines already broken when I found them. I copied museum images. Some of these copies were very bad. This is how mastery begins.

For years I worked the night shift on a municipal garbage route. Long solitary hours. You begin to see things differently when you are alone with the refuse of civilization at 3 AM. A dumpster, properly lit, has the structural dignity of a cathedral. A trash bag, swollen and gleaming under a streetlamp, possesses a kind of chiaroscuro that Caravaggio himself would have recognized, though I believe he would have envied the texture.

I was written up after my supervisor found me dramatically lighting a dumpster with a work lamp at 3:40 AM so that I could paint it. They said I had “delayed the route.” I said I had discovered the still life of civilization. We could not agree.

The Awakening

After losing my position, I experienced what I can only describe as an artistic revelation. Standing in the alley behind the Rite Aid on Glendale Boulevard, surrounded by cardboard and the faint perfume of expired dairy, I understood:

“The world throws away what it does not understand.”

From that night forward I have dedicated myself to the sacred dignity of discarded things. Every ketchup packet is a relic. Every raccoon is a critic. Every broken shopping cart has more structural integrity than most marriages.

The Mission

To elevate leftovers into liturgy. To canonize the ketchup packet. To immortalize the raccoon’s midnight banquet as if it were a supper divine.

I work in oil, assemblage, and site-specific performance. I have staged opera in landfills. I have stitched haute couture from bubble wrap and tape. I have built crucifixes from pizza boxes and reliquaries for melted lighters. Critics cannot decide whether I am skewering the art world or renewing it. Collectors fight over the difference.

I am not making trash into art. I am showing that art was trash all along.

This is Garabaggio.

This is art that stinks a little.

Lux ex Litteris: Light from Trash. 😉