Artists Transform Obama’s Solyndra Scraps Into World’s Most Expensive Art Display

There’s a certain symmetry in the action of transforming useless waste from a failed industry into worthless art.

Solyndra’s glass tubes found a second life recently in some lefty art display.


Hope you like working, kid.
You’re going to have to pay for this junk some day.

Artists transformed Solyndra scraps into a junk art project.
Silicon Valley reported:

When Solyndra filed for bankruptcy last year, thousands of employees were let go, dozens of vendors were left high and dry, hundreds of millions of dollars were lost — and millions of glass tubes were abandoned in a San Jose warehouse.

Now some of those tubes, a signature design element of the company’s cylindrical solar panels, have found a second life as modern art. Yet like so much about Solyndra, they’ve become another flash point in the controversy surrounding the Fremont company.

Oakland architects Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello used 1,368 of the glass tubes to create “SOL Grotto,” an architectural sculpture on display in the lush grounds of the University of California Botanical Garden in Berkeley. The piece is part of a larger exhibit called Natural Discourse, which features work from a multidisciplinary group of artists, writers, architects and researchers.

But “SOL Grotto” has generated the most publicity as the source of a fresh wave of criticism by conservative commentators and House Republicans, who have long held up Solyndra, which was awarded a $535 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy, as a prime example of wasteful spending by the Obama administration. Some of those critics are now blasting “SOL Grotto” as the world’s most expensive piece of taxpayer-funded artwork, even though a bankruptcy court determined that the glass

Photo of author
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

You can email Jim Hoft here, and read more of Jim Hoft's articles here.

 

Thanks for sharing!