We Seattleites are accustomed to recycling every damn carton and container we use, but bottle caps present a problem. The citys recycling program doesnt want them, because they gum up the conveyor belts and grinders that turn todays 16 oz. of Poland Spring into tomorrows $250 Patagonia sweater. But Texas artist Trenton Doyle Hancock presents us with a solutionor rather, nine of themin his new installation A Better Promise at the PACCAR Pavilion. Overhead hangs a giant horror hand, composed of several separate panels, with colorful perforations and fingernails. Facing west to catch the evening light, its a pleasing but not particularly meaningful Pop Art sculpture, an immobile mobile. Beneath are nine Plexiglas bins where were to deposit our plastic bottle caps. Help me turn trash to art, reads Hancocks rustic wooden signpost. What kind of future art? He hasnt declared his intentions yet. May we suggest a giant fleece mitten for the hand? The hanging palm and fingersfacing upward, as if in supplicationare made of aluminum, but not recycled from old Diet Coke cans. After being open a week, his nine receptacles have a few inches of caps in each of them, plus some miscellaneous garbage. (Whoever tossed in the Häagen-Dazs lid, shame on you!) Whatever Hancock intends to make of the collected caps, itll mainly be rendered in primary colorsred and yellow are doing quite well. Purple, not so much. BRIAN MILLER
Tuesdays-Sundays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., 2010