Work by Miguel Novelo, Trina Michelle Robinson, and CCA undergraduate Haley Mae Caranto, as well as a special retrospective for former AIR Jim Growden.
The Artist in Residence Program (AIR) at Recology San Francisco is thrilled to announce exhibition dates for current artists-in-residence Miguel Novelo, Trina Michelle Robinson, and California College of the Arts undergraduate, Haley Mae Caranto, as well as a special retrospective for former AIR Jim Growden to culminate the celebration of our 35th anniversary.
We’re excited to participate in San Francisco Art Week, an annual celebration of the Bay Area’s vibrant arts community, and will be offering extended open hours for these exhibitions.
Friday, January 16, 2026 from 5 – 8 PM
Saturday, January 17, 2026 from 12 – 3 PM
Tuesday, January 20, 2026 from 3 – 7:30 PM with artist talk by Haley Mae Caranto at 6 PM (401 Tunnel), Jim Growden at 6:15 PM (401 Tunnel), Miguel Novelo at 6:30 PM (503 Tunnel), and Trina Michelle Robinson at 7 PM (503 Tunnel).
Wednesday, January 21, 2026 from 12 – 3 PM
Thursday, January 22, 2026 from 1 – 3 PM
Friday, January 23, 2026 from 12 – 3 PM
Admission is free and open to the public, no reservation required. All ages are welcome and the site is wheelchair accessible.
Location
Recology Art Studios
503 and 401 Tunnel Avenue, San Francisco
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Written by Weston Teruya
Miguel Novelo’s Máquina Fantasma situates contemporary computing and new media equipment in the longer arc of tools and technologies that human societies have used to perceive and intervene in the world around us. By taking this long view, grounded in an indigenous perspective, he demystifies the spectre of innovation, the chase of profits, and planned obsolescence and its requisite wake of discards.
By layering disparate technologies in the installation, like a digital screen and an automobile tire, Novelo animistically opens portals into the inner lives of our tools–giving a sense of their possible past histories and purpose. The screen displays the wheel–an ancient technology–as it rolls away and moves about. In other sculptures, Novelo cracks open computer casings and motor blocks, laying bare the inner mechanisms of tools typically hidden beneath polished surfaces. Computer case panels are utilized to build a larger structure of surfaces on surfaces; only obscuring other covers. Fans and heat sinks are displayed, recognizing their value to the smooth operation of our tools and emphasizing the resource costs of their workings.
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Written by Weston Teruya
Through immersive sound, video, and installations of growing plants, Trina Michelle Robinson’s Grounded: A Series, creates a contemplative space to consider the things we gather around us across time and how they speak to our histories and relations. Sonic recordings of unseen objects as they are activated, bounced, and moved in the world fill the gallery space. Robinson interweaves these clips with found recordings. The audio track has a physicality, pulsing through the space and entering our bodies. By deemphasizing the visual presence of the objects she sourced from the Public Reuse and Recycling Area in favor of documenting their sensory or emotive traces, our things become less property to be desired, consumed, or thrown out, than pieces of the world that live alongside us and shape our stories together.
In a series of video and photo works, Robinson also intervenes in archival art prints she encountered in the pile, each depicting Black figures. The found images speak to elements of Southern American history, migration, labor, and the role of Black performers on stage. Her responses to these images include documentation of a storytelling performance she did at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City for The Moth and a brief video performance on a train line. As historic prints, the found images were bought and circulated, shaping community stories. Robinson’s dialogical response makes space for considering new senses of time and relationality, breathing into the archive, finding space for embodied presence in representations that might otherwise read as flat.
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Written by Weston Teruya
Haley Mae Caranto’s intricate, intuitive drawings are an expressive visual diary documenting daily feelings and reflections. Over the years, this record became a way of holding and expressing her vulnerability: navigating identity, mental health, and invisible disabilities. Over time, she began layering these images over other contrasting materials, including copies of photos and medical scans, emphasizing depths beneath lines and patterns on a surface.
In Lithophyte, Caranto expands on her drawing practice, etching, cutting, and transforming found materials to continue her exploration of interiority. The resulting installation includes laser-etched ceramic tiles, disparate surfaces covered with her linework, like a network of roots taking hold. Like a radicle burrowing deep, the evocation of roots serves as a reminder of the dynamics beneath surfaces, like the complexities of identity and people’s unseen lives. Even seemingly solid building materials and objects may have unseen complexities outside of the public eye. -
We are honored to present a retrospective celebrating the enduring influence of community through the works of Jim Growden, the program's second artist-in-residence (1991) and longtime Recology employee.
Growden began his career as a figurative sculptor working primarily in bronze and later expanded his practice using found materials. During his Recology residency, he created a series of steel and wood sculptures that will be shown in the Environmental Learning Center Gallery. These works helped to establish a central theme of the AIR program: that art from recycled materials can elevate the transformative potential of creative reuse.
In 1971, Growden moved to a studio on the San Francisco waterfront, a change that profoundly influenced the evolution of his work. Surrounded by the tools and materials of the maritime industry, Growden drew inspiration from their rugged forms and textures. Over time, his approach shifted from literal representation to more abstract interpretations. He began working with wood and welded metal, occasionally incorporating canvas, rope, rubber, and cement, transforming materials into entirely new creations through an intuitive dialogue with the objects, allowing each piece to emerge organically.