Jennifer McPhee
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 16/02) - As promised, Craig Yeo made crustless party sandwiches for people to snack on during his three-day art show and sale last weekend at his yellow house in Kam lake.

Craig Yeo sits in his shopping cart chair wearing an Elvis mask. - Jennifer McPhee/NNSL photo

But the sandwiches -- made of Wonder Bread, margarine and a grotesque marshmallow-like product -- remained untouched beneath plastic wrap. Yeo prepared this most unappetizing snack on purpose, he explains.

"I didn't want to feed the nation."

Yeo was selling some of the furniture he creates from objects rescued from the dump. He believes mass-produced furniture is uninspired and all the same.

"They couldn't be worse if you made them from garbage. So why not make them from garbage?" says the little paper he hands out at his sale.

Yeo is waging a small revolt against disposable culture, and against mind-dulling blandness. He saves things that would otherwise pile up in landfills and gives them a better life by making them interesting. For instance, when Woolco turned into Wal-Mart, the company junked its store fixtures. But Yeo transformed Woolco's trash into a very functional steel rack for hanging pots and pans. Another creation is a surprisingly comfortable chair made from a shopping cart.

This is Yeo's first sale, and half the profits will go to B'Tselem, the Israeli Centre for Human Rights in Occupied Territories. B'Tselem documents accounts of human rights violations, mostly committed against Palestinians, in an effort to influence Israeli policy makers and educate the public.

Yeo hopes people who come to his sale will visit the Web site www.btselem.org and get involved by writing Canada's foreign affairs minister.

Yeo also questions information funnelled to the public through the media. Most media outlets, he says, don't look very deeply at what's really happened in the Middle East. "It's easier to tell people about suicide bombers than to look at complicated political matters," he says.

Somehow, the show's serious context doesn't seem at odds with other aspects of his personality. This is a guy whose eyes light up during a discussion about rubber vomit.

"Think how scary the world would be if there were no fun ... if you took George Bush seriously."