Artist Jenny Droomgoole hosts a ‘trash-day party’ outside the Fleisher Memorial Art space. She created a cardboard trash man to help her greet people and celebrate all the men and women who collect our Philadelphia trash daily. (Maria Pouchnikova)
Performance artist Jenny Drumgoole just wanted to thank some sanitation workers who had helped her with a video she was making on her street in Kensington.
Next thing you know, she was staging “Happy Trash Day!” parties all over Philly for the oft-dissed trash collectors.
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The first time Anthony Quail Jr. met Jenny Drumgoole, June, he was near the end of his usual Thursday trash-collection route, driving driving down a narrow side street in Kensington near the El. She was dressed in a flowing aqua dance costume, smeared with glittery clown makeup, and she was frantically flagging down his trash truck.
“I thought maybe something was going on in the street, or someone was hurting her, or she’s just going crazy —” Quail laughs. “We thought she maybe took the wrong drugs or something. I mean, you know. I was gonna help her, but I wasn’t sure what was going on.”
Drumgoole is more blunt: “They locked the doors at first, because they thought I was a crackhead.” She laughs.
