Jill Mulholland draws on a background in archaeology for her repurposed creations, which include these “3 Buoys,” on display starting Saturday at the Anita Building in Astoria.

An exhibition of trash art is returning to the Anita Building this week.

The annual pop-up show culminates the Coastal Oregon Artist Residency. Two artists, Jill Mulholland and John Mueller, will exhibit works created over the summer using materials reclaimed from the Astoria Transfer Station.

The residency, now in its sixth year, is a collaboration between Recology Western Oregon and Astoria Visual Arts. It aims to “support the creation of art from recycled, repurposed and discarded materials.”

The four-month program, running from June to September, is “designed to provide new ways to think about conservation and the environment through art,” said Astoria Visual Arts director Annie Eskelin. It’s about reclaiming trash and giving it new life.

The selection panel consists of three members each from Recology and Astoria Visual Arts, including past residents.

Managing the project at Recology is waste zero specialist Rhonda Green, who has sustainability in her full-time purview.

“I’m just so proud of the program,” Green said. “What a message to be sending.”

Only artists who work with reclaimed material in some way qualify for the paid residency.

While Green does not participate in the selection of artists, she said, “I’m just amazed at what these people can do. I am so shocked every year at what I see as garbage or scrap metal, glass or whatever; they take it, and they create these breathtaking pieces of art.”

Mueller is a lifelong, full-time working artist. This is his first residency.

“It’s been an amazing experience,” he said. “In my prior artistic career, I’ve never had a chance to do something this immersive and completely focus on my art. It’s mind-blowing, the quantity and quality of things that people discard.”

Mueller’s focus in the body of work titled “Environmental Factors” is the rarification of ordinary objects. His pieces include styrofoam transformed into an enigmatic hovering piece and a rusted wheelbarrow on a bed frame.

“I was very interested in the beauty of surfaces and distress that only time can have on objects,” Mueller said. “It’s not something that you could set out to create; it’s just something that takes place through exposure, weather and time.”

Mulholland was an archaeologist in a past career. “I like finding things,” she said. “Archaeology is ancient garbage, and so I was looking at current garbage for treasures that I could make into art.”

Over five visits to the dump, Mulholland collected 1,000 pounds of material — “Moderation and I have never been close,” she said — for her body of work, “The Anthropology of Trash.” She turned buoys into personalities and various objects into costumes or flowers.

“This residency was in a lot of ways made for me because I usually only ever use discarding material,” Mulholland said. “But it got me out of my discarded materials rut.”

To select the materials, artists spend time at the transfer station, where they have to make quick decisions on what objects to grab as crews work their regular operations with heavy equipment.

“You got to hand it to the guys that work there,” Mueller said. “It’s dangerous, it’s unpleasant, but they go up there and do it every day, so hats are off to them.”

The exhibition is “the most interesting art exhibit that we have all year in Astoria,” Mulholland said.

It was also the first zero waste event in Clatsop County, according to Green. “And it’s still a zero-waste event. There’s no trash left afterward,” Green said. A piece from each winning residency artist over the years is at Recology’s Warrenton office as part of a permanent collection.

The exhibit runs in the Anita Building on Commercial Street through Oct. 19. It opens with a reception during Astoria’s Second Saturday Art Walk this weekend, with artists present from 6 to 8 p.m.

A closing talk and reception will also be held at 3 p.m. Oct. 19. All of the art pieces will be for sale.