Andrew Junge walks slowly through San Francisco’s Recycling and Disposal Inc., also known as “the dump.” He plugs his nose, avoiding the foul smell of garbage. Although he dreads the toxic aroma, he is on a mission: to collect enough Styrofoam to make a life-sized Hummer.

One step at a time, he follows the flow of his feet, crunching the leftover scraps below – the once juicy, finger-lickin’ pieces of meat served at dinner time. Not only are there bones, but aluminum soda cans that have lost most of their bright, pick-me-off-the-shelf lure from all the maggots, slimy worms and ants. But it’s okay. The journey has just begun for the brown-haired Junge, who sports blue-jean overalls, covered with splotches of old white paint.

There are a surprising amount of trash artists in the Bay Area who, every year, create masterpieces from objects fashioned from their neighbors’ trash. Most are trying to prove some kind of political point. Need proof that one person’s trash really is someone else’s treasure? Consider the dump’s former artist-in-residence Junge, who has transformed thousands of pieces of polystyrene into a 17-by-6-foot Hummer that’s now on display in the Exploratorium’s aptly named exhibition, “Reconsidered Materials.”

Junge didn’t realize the contradictions the Hummer and Styrofoam offered each other, until he began building his work of art from tire to sunroof.

“Styrofoam will crumble in your hand; Hummers are durable,” Junge says, scratching his head. “Styrofoam is cheap; Hummers are expensive. Styrofoam is made mostly of oil; Hummers have a symbolic meaning in wars, such as the War on Terrorism, which is, I believe, essentially about oil.”

When Junge’s career at the dump ended, new artists-in-residence, like Sarah Barsness and Ed Clapp, were making their way in to create more goodies for people in the Bay Area.

Clapp walks in the pounding rain, hearing the echo in his bright orange hard hat. He begins sifting through pile after pile of trash, until he finds the perfect pieces he is looking for, avoiding the needles of junkies, who may have dropped them off the night before.

“You always have to pay attention to what you’re doing out in the dump when looking for possible art pieces,” Clapp says. “Not only have I found needles, but also bales and bales of marijuana. I’m sure whoever dropped it off was perfectly legal to have it. Wink, wink.”

He bends down, picks up the piece of plywood and knows he has found a winner. He stands back up, dusting the grime off his red plaid shirt, maroon-colored vest and dark grey khaki pants. As he walks back to his green three-door garage residence, he pushes his brown specs onto the bridge of his nose, stroking the brownish-gray hair on his face, contemplating his next move.

“I’m not going to lie, it’s very challenging at times to work with junk,” Clapp says. “You find bits and pieces of different things and then have to make it into some fabulous piece of artwork that people are supposed to go, ‘Ooh and ah’ about. I’m not sure I’m that great at it, but I sure do try.”

As he enters the sawdust-covered garage, the music of Lucinda Williams, an old folk singer, comes out of the speakers from an old-school black CD player – one he possibly found at the dump. He knows it’s time to begin his work.

“I love working with wood because you can make it into almost anything,” Clapp says. “Wood has a history to it as well. You wonder, ‘Where did it originally come from?’ and ‘Where will it go when it leaves here?’”

While some men have little black books to keep the phone numbers of possible lovers, Clapp has a little black book to draws sketches in as a blueprint for his art pieces.

“I find a lot of my inspiration through various fashion magazines, such as the ‘New York Times Style Magazine,’” Clapp says. “I draw rough sketches in my book, and then go from there to try and create a masterpiece.”

Clapp suggests his work is more than just a piece of art; it is a representation of the city itself.

“San Francisco is a very rich city, which allows people like me to find great things at the local dump,” Clapp says. “People don’t think twice about throwing things away. It’s like second nature. I think it’s a reflection of our society. We can dispose of anything.”

But can this kind of art really be taken seriously? Is this just a fast trend that is in the door and out the other before we even know of its existence? Can you imagine Rodin’s “The Thinker” fashioned entirely out of discarded toothbrushes, or Jean-Paul Gaultier’s flared pants, cut and sewn from heavy-duty bubble wrap?

Well, history seems to show us that this trash art fad is here to stay. If recycling has been the buzzword of the last decade, art from recyclables appears to be the natural next step in the environmental movement.

According to Metro Active Arts, an art company based out of San Francisco, in the last two years several exhibits showcasing artists who use recycled materials in their work have opened across the nation. “Hello Again: Recycling for the Real World” graced the museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and “The Object Redux: Re-Used, Re-Newed and Re-Invented,” displayed at the Charles A. Wustum Museum in Racine, Wisc. Next February, the Oakland Museum will follow suit with a large-scale retrospective on recycled art.

Junge slowly emerges from the well-equipped studio he has occupied for three straight months with a final product. His 24-hour access to all the local materials at the dump allows him to drive off like a champion, not in his Styrofoam Hummer, but in his all-too ironic, “Big ugly gas guzzling white Chevy van,” made from nothing out of the ordinary, just good old manufactured metal.

As Junge drives away from the residency, in some strange way he misses the Hummer he’s left behind.

“As I made the Hummer, I slowly started to fall in love with it in a weird way,” Junge says. “It is so American. It’s so masculine. I hate that we make cars that can only run four miles to the gallon, but I love the fact that we have the opportunity to drive cars that can only run four miles to the gallon. The Hummer is an impractical car, but people will buy it. It’s funny and wonderful in some ways, as well as disturbing all at the same time.”