Ever Wondered What an Artist Could Do with Plastics?
By Deb Kramer
On February 2, the Art department at SJSU hosted a lecture about the “Gyre: Plastic Ocean Exhibit” and featured Julie Decker, curator, and three artists who shared their stories, artwork, and process about ocean plastic. Fascinating presentation. You can learn more about the exhibit from the Anchorage Museum website.
One of the images that is used for the marketing is “Indra’s Cloud” a raft of plastic bottles that went from place to place around an Asian archipelago.
The artists who gave presentations talked about how unsettling their work is, but also the rewards of working with a discarded material. Judith Selby Lang works with her husband Richard Lange [website] along Kehoe Beach on the northern part of Point Reyes National Seashore in California. Their work features photographs of the collected items. She talked about how they collect, sort, and catalog each item for later use.
The curator showed a portion of a National Geographic film about several of the artists going out on a boat to a remote section of mid-Alaska coastline to collect materials. You can read a blog post from one of the artists, an interview with the filmmaker, and view the 20-minute video.
I highly recommend visiting the art exhibit displayed at the SJSU Thompson Gallery in the Art building.
The small exhibition at SJSU is just a small portion of the total exhibit. To learn more about the whole exhibit, see the Anchorage Museum website.
Exhibit is at the SJSU Art Building in the Thompson Gallery. Hours are Monday-Friday, 10-4pm and Tuesdays evenings, 6-7:30 pm. To learn more about the whole exhibit, see the Anchorage Museum website.