For the last four months, Nemo Gould has made a new home at the San Francisco Dump. On most days, Gould can be found rummaging through heaps of filth, his life endangered by choking fumes and dust, renegade vehicles charging through narrow passageways, or large furniture haphazardly pushed off the back end of a truck. Gould is searching for the perfect bits of rubbish to help him create faces, limbs, eyeballs — anything to bring his creations to life.

Throughout his stint in the Artist in Residence program at the San Francisco Dump (or the SF Recycling & Disposal, Inc.'s Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center, as the personnel there prefer to call it), Gould could be found hoarding bits of antique furniture, piles of retro comic books, vintage television sets, tacky old lamps and vacuum parts to create an army of kinetic sculptures. As part of the program, which rotates a new artist in every four or so months, Gould has 24-hour access to the dump grounds as well as a studio where he creates a body of work to show off at the end of his residency.

Previous artists have produced series of abstractions, political statements, found-art dioramas and collages. While each body of work intrinsically holds significance in considering re-purposable materials and the excess of waste our society produces, Gould’s work sets itself aside by bearing no junk-like resemblance to its former life as waste. His sculptures are shiny and bright while still retaining a sense of reverence to the retro and antique. Many of his creations literally come to life, urging the viewer to interact by pushing buttons and flipping switches, turning on lights, sound and movement.

“My work appeals to the 7-year-old boy mind,” Gould says as the afternoon sun casts a youthful glow in his brown eyes. “Because I still have one… I see how silly it is.”

He later says, “I take silly very seriously.”

Taking account of his childhood memories of Science-Fiction and comic books, Gould creates a delightful array of robotic, humorous characters that share a dialogue with each other, both in their perceptible similarities and in the intricate details that only Gould knows.

The lanky, six-foot-four 31-year-old takes his hands out of his pockets to give a quick tour of his studio space-turned art gallery, recently renovated for the opening of his exhibit. First, he grips the tail of “Impala,” a quick looking antlered jackalope-type beast on wheels, explaining that his tail came from the handle of a vacuum. He dashes off to “Catmonkey,” cradling the curved back of a saw-handle headed cat in his palm, which came from the body of the same vacuum. Then another jaunt to the corner, where “The Performer” entices us with a suggestive little dance. Gould explains that this little robot’s body is home to another piece of the vacuum.

“It is like a jigsaw puzzle,” Gould elaborates. “I collect all the pieces and then swirl them around on the floor until some sort of sense emerges out of the mess. Usually some sort of recognizable form takes shape, like a head or body. From there it is just a matter of hunting for the missing pieces.”

Gould provides an immaculate contextual background for each of the objects he creates, elaborating on where each counterpart came from, where each mechanical piece was salvaged from, how each little wire was painfully extracted from an old ham radio or a vintage television set.

His favorite discovery during his time at the dump was a human-size suit of samurai armor. Though he found it completely impractical for his work, it was damn cool at the same time.

The worst, Gould says, was “[a] full size trash can full of dog shit.”

While Gould’s work intrinsically involves the use of repurposed, recycled materials, he says it’s merely a coincidence that his work comments on the social implications of excessive waste. Gould doesn’t consider his work “green” in methodology, but he likes the idea that he reuses other people’s discards.

Gould usually finds himself in second-hand stores and rummage sales, searching for the components for his creations to purchase, but the program offered him a unique opportunity to take everything and anything he wanted. In fact, the artists are not allowed to use any outside, non-dump claimed materials during their residency.

The director of the Artist in Residence program, Paul Fresina, says a major aspect of the program is, “an overall public education effort to conserve resources and get people to think about their waste and hopefully recycle more and be creative about thinking of new ways to recycle.”

The program, which has welcomed 66 artists since its 1990 inception, requires a grueling application, interview and review process by a board of art professionals and artists, waste management employees, and environmentalists. After completion of the residency, the artist leaves all artwork in the company’s possession for an entire year, and three pieces are selected to remain in the permanent collection. These works are then displayed in public spaces throughout the city.

Gould’s faith in art has made his efforts worthwhile. He had previously applied to the program before his current residency, but was turned down. His second attempt turned out to be more fruitful.

He contests, “One really has to believe that [art] is worth doing even if it means being kind of broke and desperate.”

At the opening of his show on September 21, the warehouse-style studio space was packed with marveled adults. They swarmed in short little lines to see a chorus of corkscrew wine openers framed in their own little vintage television set in the piece “Alcohologram.” They also crowded their faces together for a peek at “Captain Nemo,” a porthole viewer that shows a miniature submarine under attack by a giant squid.

“I think most adults are dangerously lacking in wonder,” Nemo says. “As we age and learn more and more of the answers to life’s mysteries, I think we get further from the important stuff. When I am working, I am always trying to make things that can produce a child like response from a jaded adult—it’s a matter of life and death!”