LADN columnist Dennis McCarthy explains:

A couple of days a week, 29-year-old Levon Demirjian and 28-year-old Elan Palmer-Hagouel - a couple of budding artists who have been pals since high school - cruise the San Fernando Valley looking for big trashed items people dump on public property.

Old mattresses, sofas, bed frames, tires, refrigerators, file cabinets - the kinds of things that make you shake your head and think "slobs" when you see the stuff discarded in an alley or on the side of the road.

The guys don't pick up the trash or recycle it. They cut it up with saws and paint it to make street art - something colorful and not quite so objectionable to the public eye.

They've been doing it for about a month and a half now, and somebody must like their work because it's usually gone in about a week, they say.

Beats the time it takes the city to pick up the dumped items by about six months.