Debris to Art

Transforming washed up rope into a sculptural painting.

For this week’s Art Hour, Nature Links participants explored the world of Ecological Art. Eco artists practice a form of activism through their artwork, through showcasing sustainable creative processes and producing pieces that help to preserve or remediate the environment.

For inspiration, we turned to the work of Mariah Reading, an eco-artist from Bangor, Maine. Throughout her travels to native lands, Mariah creates impressionist paintings on trash in order to depict the harms of pollution and climate change. When I look at her photos, it feels as though Mariah has in a sense repaired the landscape. She transforms the trash that harms the environment into objects that evoke it, and celebrate it. Definitely spend some time on her website here: MariahReadingArt.com

Mariah and I collaborated on a video showing her painting process, as part of a project for the MDI Biological Laboratory called "Art Meets Science." This project invites anyone to participate! Find a piece of debris in the environment, and transform it into a piece of art. Then, share your finished work by uploading it to an online gallery!  Click here to visit the project website.

For the workshop part of our class, I challenged everyone to bring in a piece of trash to emulate Mariah's process. I wasn't sure at first how to handle the marine debris I chose: tangled up plastic rope. This kind of trash is a very common sighting on our Maine beaches. I removed it from the beach, cut off a length of it, and coiled it into a beautiful circular pattern. Already, it was transforming! Then, after priming this new surface, I painted the circular coils with ocean-inspired colors.

Challenge for participants: Next time you're out walking a trail or exploring the beach, grab a plastic grocery bag and put it in your pocket. This way you are prepared to pick up any trash you might come across. And who knows - maybe it will become your next piece of art!