John Jay College is pleased to present its third annual Art From Detritus exhibition. This is an exhibit of art created from trash to celebrate EARTH DAY. The artists in this exhibit have taken fragments of discarded, found and recycled materials and creatively transformed these discards of our consumer based society into painting, collage, sculpture and assemblage. Continuing the health of our planet, as these artists do, reminds us of the importance of recycling. Images from last year's Detritus exhibit can be seen on the college website. LINK HERE

New York City may be cutting back on recycling, but not these artists. In the process, they are raising public consciousness of this critically important environmental cause.

Recycling throwaways is not a new artistic idea. Artists have been using spent materials & leftovers ever since the cave artist drew with embers of charred wood dipped in animal fat. The Russian constructivists at the turn of the century, the Dadaists & Surrealists & later, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell, Louise Nevelson, Edward & Nancy Kienholz, Julian Schnabel, Louise Bourgeois, Dennis Oppenheim are among the most famous of many who use discarded artifacts as fodder for their art.

Inspired in 1993 after attending her first Recycling Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, N'Cognita (aka Vernita Nemec) curateded the first Detritus exhibition in Portland, Oregon in 1994. Since then she has gathered Detritus Art in Kansas City, Phoenix, Pittsburgh and New York City in more than a dozen exhibits. Nemec, an artist herself, has been curating shows of art from throwaways, aka detritus with another impetus coming out of her inability to discard things. Security envelopes with patterned insides, dead roses, catfood cans, broken goblets, plastic packaging forms fill her studio, saved to make art from one day, she says. Until that time, she has invited many artists to share some fascinating solutions to the problem of too much garbage: Make Art instead of trash.

Past & present Detritus artists include: Scott Becker of the Garbage Gurus, Boris Bally, a Fellissimo prize winner; Kazuko Miyamoto, Garry Noland, Linda Horn, Carol Cole, Susan Newmark, Bill Miller, Miriam Schaer, L Brandon Krall, Mary Frances Judge, Paul Greco, Lynda Ray, Sylvia Benitez, Albert Depas, Taney Roniger, May de Viney, Sura Ruth, d'Anne de Simone, Stephen Soreff, Ed Herman, Alan Rosner, Cathy Hunter, Len Rosenfeld, Kiffi Diamond, Rima Grad, Marjie Zelman, K.E.Smith, FlashLight, Marilyn Sontag; Ridge Street Artists Stuart Nicholson & Ursula Clark, & others to name just a few who have participated. Past Detritus shows have received funding and contributions from the Kauffman Fnd, National Recycling Coalition, METRO of Portland OR, Westinghouse Pittsburgh, Bridging the Gap in Kansas City and numerous private donors.

Catalogs from past exhibits are available and provide a rich documentation of artists' statements and images. Please contact the Curator for copies and further information about the show & new catalog.