THE LANDFILL AND ITS ART:

SNIFF AND THE EMBRACE OF IMPERMANENCE

The landfill is a collaboration. Human beings made it. Machines

with large mechanical jaws and gaping metal mouths swallowed
buildings, tore up streets, excavated foundations, scooped up the
waste of industry, and spit mouthfuls or rubble onto trucks. The trucks
disgorged their loads into the bay. Then, quite without human
intervention, the dump became a landscape, a landscape with ruins.
The art of the landfill has continued this collaboration. The
landfill provides the raw materialscement slabs to paint on,
driftwood, and rusty metal to assemble into sculptures. It provides the
setting and the inspiration. Its irregular masses of broken concrete, its
twisted knots of rusting metal impose a rude aesthetic It would eat
alive whatever is tentative and hesitant. Dainty refinements and a
slavish imitation of nature will not do here.
The art of the landfill emerges unexpectedly from the
underbrush. It juts out from jumbles of concrete blocks. It arrays itself
along a rocky shoreline. The art thats not made on the landfill tries its
best to fit in. Sometimes it seems that the landfill grows art the way it
grows fennel and pampas grass. Or, to put it another way, as if the
landfill were the host, and the art a gorgeous symbiotic parasite.
Landfill art comes and goes. The wind knocks it over. The sun

fades it. Rot eats its wooden heart. Vandals vent their hostility on its
unprotected body and leave their tags on the carcass. It ranges from
casual projectsa stack of balanced stones, an arrangement of found
objectsto obsessive masterpieces, years in the making, like Mad
Marks Castle. Some is the work of outsider artists like Mark. Much of
it has been produced by trained artists, such as the enormously prolific
collaborative known as SNIFF.

In the last days before the big 1999 eviction of the homeless,
Jimbow the Hobow, who had been my guide through the landfills maze
of trails and campsites, led me to a stretch of rubbly waterfront on the
north shore, saying there was art down there he wanted me to see.
What I saw blew me away: a scrap-wood boat; totems composed of
painted pilings; and concrete blocks, muralized from head to toe with
riotous, bawdy, irreverent scenes of heaven, earth and hell, a fools
carnival, an apocalyptic road show.
Jimbow looked on with amusement as I rushed from one art work
to another, whooping and hollering. To be surprised by beauty is even
better than finding it where it is expected. Aesthetic pleasure merges
with the thrill of discovery. I could not contain myself. I wanted to drink
everything in, in one gulp.
But who had created this remarkable work? A black flag with
SNIFF written in white letters flew from the mast of the scrap wood

boat. Who or what was "SNIFF?" Jimbow didnt know. Hed seen a
group of young men painting on the weekends, but he had no idea who
they were. I looked around for some clue to their identity.
A few feet away from the boat was a twenty foot long
rectangular concrete box, approximately five feet wide and tall. One
end was open. At the other was a giant valve that once controlled the
flow of water through a metal culvert, the remains of which pierced the
walls of the rectangle on two sides. The entire structure was painted
inside and out. On the wall facing the bay was a circus scene. An
ambulance rushed toward a fallen acrobat who lay in the center of the
ring. A donkey in a yellow clown suit with red polka dots sat at ringside,
watching impassively while hugging his legs to his chest. Oblivious to
what was going on, a Chinese juggler looked out at the viewer and
dropped his juggling balls.
On the inland facing wall, two mermaids reached to scoop up a
drowning sailor. A ship sailed in the background. The round faces of
the passengers watched from the portholes.
The interior walls of the valve housing were painted end to end
with a phantasmagoric panorama of hell. The dominant color was red.
Drunks and lovers were drowning in a red sea. Demon donkeys
speared the damned with tridents and grabbed the coattails of those
who tried to escape. The silhouettes of priapic men sporting curving
erections could be seen through the windows of a tipsy tenement.

There in hell, someone had sketched four skeletons standing side by

side. They were labeled Dave, Scott, Bruce, and Scott. One held a
"SNIFF" flag. In the Last Judgment, Michelangelo hid his portrait in the
flayed skin of St. Bartholomew. Perhaps the SNIFF artists, following his
example, hid their portraits in hell.
Three months after my discovery of their work, I arrived at the
landfill somewhat earlier than usual and finally met SNIFF. As I was
walking down the road towards the shore I saw walking towards me,
two women, a couple of dogs, and three men, one of whom was
pulling a shopping cart loaded with jars of paint.
Are you guys SNIFF? I asked.
They were. We introduced ourselves. I said hello to Scott Hewitt,
David Ryan and Bruce Rayburn, Scotts wife Amalie, and Bruces
partner Kelli. I told them how much I admired their work. The fourth
SNIFF, Scott Meadowscalled Buddy to distinguish him from the
other Scotthad not come out this time. They said they painted on
Saturday mornings, arriving a little after 7:00 and staying till around
11:30.
I returned the following weekend, and the next and the next. When
they learned I painted murals, they invited me to join them, but I
declined. They had it together and I did not want to mess with their
magic. I watched them as they worked. They would paint through the
morning with regular interruptions for roughhousing and arguing about

the color of a background, or who left the lid off the paint jar the dog
had just turned over. An entourage of various sizes would grow around them as the
morning wore on.
Kelli was a regular. Shed sit on a plank or piece of piling, baby-sitting Lola, her
diminutive, but fierce Chihuahua. If Lola strayed, Kelli would scold her in an impossibly
high squeaky voice. If larger unfamiliar dogs wandered by shed scoop her up and stick
her in her purse. Sometimes David would bring along his two daughters, Ellie and Neva.
Hed pull Ellie in a green wagon lined with a quilt and carry Neva in a backpack. When
Scott and Amalies son, Eli Rider, was born in 1999, Amalie carried him out
in a stroller. When he grew older hed play in the dirt with his Builder
Bob toys. When his sister, Stella, was born in 2003, Amalie brought her
along in a backpack. Sally, Davids wife, and Kirstin, whom Scott Meadows
wooed and married during the years SNIFF painted at the landfill, would usually arrive
later in the morning. The regular crew of painters, their partners and
children was often augmented by a gaggle of brothers and sisters, mothers
and fathers, friends and cousins, together with their dogs. By the time 11:30 rolled
around, the by now sizable crowd would head off to lunch at Picante on 6th St or the Lane
Splitters on San Pablo Avenue, where the SNIFFs would hash and rehash the morning,
and examine Polaroid pictures of their work.
The throng that clustered around the SNIFFs at the landfill was a snapshot of the
densely intertwined lives they led. The four painters had known each other for years,
celebrated each others birthdays, played soft ball together, and taken joint trips to the
country. They painted like lunatics escaped from an asylum singing in four part harmony,

but they were all remarkably sane and wholesome. The arc of their lives bent in the
direction of stable monogamous marriages. They were home owners. They all had steady
jobs. The two Scotts and Bruce worked construction. David had a metal fabricating
workshop in a live-work space in East Oakland. They painted in the time they could
spare from jobs and families.
It was Amalie who introduced the SNIFFs to the landfill. She had been walking
her dog, Bumba, out to the Bulb, since the late 80s. When she met Scott in 1993 she
began taking him with her on her walks. David, Scott, and Bruce were part of a drawing
group. One day in 1998, Dennis, one of the members of the group, suggested they go out
to the landfill to draw. On one of their outings, Dennis brought a can of fluorescent
orange spray paint and sprayed designs on chunks of concrete lying on the shore. Then
David brought a brush and some acrylics and started painting an enigmatic cityscape.
Bruce, David and Scott Hewitt came back the next weekend to help him finish it. Mike
Boogie, Kellis brother came out and built the boat with Scott and the other SNIFFs
assistance. Scott and Amalie began painting black and white heads on the rocks of a
jetty behind the boat. Dennis dropped out of the group, Scott Meadows started coming
out, and the quartet of painters jelled into its final form. They called themselves SNIFF,
which is what dogs do. Its not an acronym.
In the beginning they set themselves the task of starting and finishing a painting in
one day. The painting of the mermaids and the circus scene on the sides of the valve
housing were both done that way. Later they gave themselves permission to take two or
three weekends, seldom more. In this manner they painted a triptych of a racetrack on
three concrete slabs propped up between the entrance to the valve housing and the boat.

They painted a black horse and a white horse galloping around the track,
a misbegotten crowd of spectators, dogs howling, a devil with a goat
on its lap, and overhead, in the center of a grey blue sky a gigantic gull
with outstretched wings holding a yellow fish in its beak.
Individually, their styles were quite different, but here on the landfill, like good
musicians, improvising for their own pleasure, they found a groove.
The landscape, the raw materials on which they worked, and the group
nature of their painting, encouraged them to loosen up and brought
out their rowdy side. What emerged, was, if not greater, at least very
different from what each of them could do on his own.

Over the years, word spread that extraordinary work was being done out on the
landfill. Magazine pieces were written and readers polls proclaimed landfill art the Best
of the Bay. As tensions in some obscure garage band sometimes erupt when it begins to
become famous, so the fact that SNIFF was beginning to be recognized, exacerbated
what were perhaps otherwise manageable conflicts in the group. It was the media tornado
that descended on SNIFF after their name came up in connection with a notorious murder
trial that ultimately blew them apart.
On Christmas eve, 2002, Laci Peterson, the pregnant wife of Scott Peterson was
reported missing. On April 13, 2003, the fetus she had been carrying washed up in South
Richmond. The next day a woman walking her dog at Point Isabel discovered her body
lodged in the rocks by at the edge of the water. Four days later Scott Peterson was
arrested and charged with her murder. The police theorized that after he killed her, he

took her body to the Berkeley Marina, loaded it into his fishing boat, motored out into the
bay, and dumped it overboard. Hed been having an affair with a woman from whom hed
concealed his marriage. The police had their motive. The media all but convicted him.
There were no other suspects. Then in August 2003, Scotts defense team, headed by LA
celebrity lawyer, Mark Geragos, announced to the press they had a theory of who really
had murdered Laci.
Point Isabel is the next peninsula over from the landfill. Debris cast into the water
from the Bulb, could easily wash up on the Point. Their hypothesis was that she had been
done in by a satanic cult operating at the Albany landfill. Their evidencethe paintings
of SNIFF.
On August 14, 2003, the Modesto Bee reported
Scott Peterson's defense team . . . briefed two forensic experts on a
satanic cult theory, including paintings and artwork near San Francisco
Bay and an experiment showing that the pregnant Laci Peterson's body
could have been placed in the water at the art site.
Attorney Matt Dalton, using a laptop computer, showed artwork
that he said depicted ritualistic killings and occult practices, and said the
artwork could be found near the end of a peninsula in the bay.i
Some of the artwork, the article said, features decapitation and devil figures.
Many of the paintings portray sexual activity, and several show pregnant women. It
proceeded to provide the reader with more vivid descriptions of SNIFFs work:
One shows a man with an ax beheading a man in a rowboat on a body of
water . . . a topless woman kneels next to the beheaded man. Another
shows a devil figure beheading a well-dressed couple in a theater balcony.
And another portrays three children, their umbilical cords attached, in a
body of water as a giant octopus wraps its tentacles around a naked
woman.
"This is all done in fun and games," Bruce Rayburn was quoted as saying. "We're

regular guys with full-time jobs who go down there once a week on Saturday mornings
with our families. . . . We've had a lot of criticism by certain groups of people who are
offended by some of the paintings. There's a lot of good themes going on, but if you're
looking for something to criticize, you can find it."
The Modesto Bee article was like the first drop of rain, which heralds the coming
of a monsoon. People magazine came out to the Bulb and photographed Scott and Bruce
standing in front of the painting of the executioner. Bruce, because he had been quoted in
the Modesto Bee article that broke the story, got most of the media calls. He appeared on
Fox News with Greta Van Susteren. Commentators on the Larry King show speculated on
whether the artists would be indicted.
I was out of town when the story broke. When I got back I got a woman at CNN
wanted to know if Id be willing to be on the Wolf Blitzer show. I said yes. I called Scott
Hewitt and David and asked if they had any objection. They said go for it, but when I
called Bruce he demanded that I give him CNNs phone number. I told I didnt have the
number and I saw no reason why I shouldnt do the interview. Then, thinking about it, I
suggested we do it together. That, at least, is how I remember the conversation. Bruce
remembers it differently. His recollection is that he suggested doing it together, and I
declined. As it turned out, CNN canceled the invitation. We were preempted by a big East
Coast black out.
Bruce ended up doing all the interviews. He and I never got back on good terms.
The loyalties of the remaining SNIFFs were torn. I worried Id become the Yoko Ono of
SNIFF, and would be blamed for its demise. At most I was the catalyst, which caused
long simmering resentments to rise to the surface. SNIFF decided to take a break. The

break became extended. In the Fall of 2003, SNIFF stopped coming out to the Landfill
altogether.
***
Before I learned the mystery of who was painting on the shore of the Bulb, I
wrote an article about the art I discovered there in which I said that whoever the artists
responsible for it might be, they appeared to embrace impermanence. The SNIFFs
liked the line and often quoted it back to me, but it was not quite accurate.
Andy Goldsworthy, the British artist is known for his transient rearrangements of
nature. Goldsworthy does indeed embrace impermanence. He does not resist the
victory of time over form. He welcomes the rivers and tides that sweep away his work,
and provide a metaphor for time itself, though he makes sure all his efforts are
meticulously documented before they are washed awayhow else can he make money?
SNIFFs relation to impermanence was closer to that of the graffiti artists, whose
elaborate pieces are never safe from desecration by other graffitists or the solvents of the
protectors of private property.
The SNIFFs had no stake in their work disappearing. It was not part of their
aesthetic. It was an occupational hazard, the price of freedom. As long as they kept to
their regular Saturday morning schedule, they accumulated new work. If they got bored
with an old painting, or ran out of materials, they painted over it. Their work remained
fresh. Once they stopped coming out to the Bulb, their paintings began to deteriorate. The
salt air, the sun, the winter winds and the vandals took their toll. A painting of an erupting
volcano from which people and animals are fleeing, disappeared beneath a yellowish
mold that grew on its surface. Taggers finally finished it off. The line of painting of which

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it was a part began to look like a row of rotting teeth. Then it was gone.
Nothing lasts forever.

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Defense outlines cult theory by John Cot and Garth Stapley, Modbee.com, August 14, 2003.
(http://www.modbee.com/reports/laci/story/7281685p-8207305c.html)
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