A canned food drive for the artsy type

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You’ve probably donated canned food at football games or churches or schools and seen the haphazard piles of cans. There’s nothing haphazard about Canstruction.

Architects, designers, builders and engineers will create structures using cans for Canstruction LA, a contest to be held across Wilshire Boulevard from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The structures will be on display form Oct. 30 to Nov. 15, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.; people are encouraged to bring a can of food for admission. The cans eventually will go to the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank.

A jury of design and culinary experts will name winners in the following categories: Juror’s Favorite, Best Use of Labels, Best Meal and Structural Ingenuity.

The ‘Little Engine That CAN,’ shown at the top, won last year for Best Use of Labels; it used mostly one size of can and used the labels to convey detail and shape. And at left is “Tuna’s Turn to Tame Hunger,” a flat-head screw made solely out of gold-labeled tuna cans.

The jury members are Sam Lubell, editor of Architect’s Newspaper; John Rivera Sedlar, chef and co-owner of the restaurant Rivera; Wim de Wit, head of the architecture and contemporary art department at the Getty Research Institute; and Randall Wilson, environmental design instructor at Art Center College of Design.

Canstruction L.A. is organized by the Society for Design Administration.

-- Mary MacVean

Photos by Tom Bonner