Creating a Visual Metaphor

 

             Artists find inspiration from all varieties of sources, including their surroundings.  Our insides are affected by our outsides and in the world of today; environmental concerns are a meaningful and legitimate source of creative inspiration.

           

            In the 70's, Mierle Ukeles, commissioned by the NYC Sanitation Department, was among the first artists to work directly using her art to educate & transform public attitudes about garbage-- orchestrating a dance of garbage trucks & see-through displays of trash's journey from the can to the landfill. Artists have always been recyclers, but Detritus Artists do so with a greater consciousness of the public message conveyed by their choice of materials: discarded paper, plastic, glass, steel & aluminum -- materials many throw away but shouldn't, especially if we are to maintain an environment safe for today & tomorrow.   

 

            Over 50 artists whose art transcends its humble origins have been selected for the 10^th anniversary of Art from Detritus, an exhibit of art transforming society's discards into unique objects of desire. Styrofoam packing materials & envelopes become wall reliefs.  Magazines are transformed into paintings & collages, tin cans into solar powered lamps, broken dolls into assemblage.  Some rely on whatever crosses their path to recycle into art, others collect specific stuff or by accident, come across a huge pile of scraps of colored wire in the garbage that marks the beginning of their odyssey of creative transformation: carving, gluing, painting, nailing, shredding, scraping, dipping, covering, layering, arranging until the viewer wishes she had thought of that. 

           

So what IS art? Something thought provoking and unique? Something beautiful? Are any of those qualities enough anymore?  Some things that are beautiful & thought provoking are not art, but when something is art, we know inside -- even when it's trash transformed.

 

A special thanks goes to these artists all have created fascinating visual metaphors we call art from the leavings of our residency on earth. 

 

 

 

Vernita Nemec aka Vernita N'Cognita, Artist/Activist/Curator Return to Mainpage