Monday, February 1, 2016

Litter River Otter

For our first official Asheville-based Repurposed Arts installation we have our Litter River Otter!

Repurposed Arts has joined forces with GreenWorks, a stellar environmental organization dedicated to cleaning up the environment, river water quality, youth development and all around environmental awesomeness!

We have started using the trash collected in GreenWorks' street and nature clean ups to be used towards art materials for this mural and future sculptures. We select, wash and sanitize, and color sort the trash before it is presented as art materials. The quantity of trash collected is outstanding, sending a real message home that this is a good route for us to take for future art projects. We hope to continue this relationship and keep this trash from the landfill by making these environmental art installations to educate the public on the issues with pollution in our area.

This mural was created with a summer school Enka Middle school group with YMCA

We washed and color sorted the trash and then worked from an under-painting. This was the first "impressionistic" trash mural I have created. We learned a lot of lessons in this pilot program on how to approach the construction of the mural, but the kids had a lot of fun and we were all super happy with the results!










Repurosed Koozies!

We are getting fancy with our beverages up in here!

Busting out some seriously cutesy koozies made of scrap fabric and leather handles and insulated with used plastic grocery bags.




Trash Flowers for Earth Day '15

As we have relocated to Asheville, here are some of the craft projects we have been involved with this past year...

Recycled Flowers were created for the 2015 Earth Day Festival hosted by the House of Balance at New Mountain on April 22nd...

Kids were invited to create 3 different flower options and pre-made flower bouquets were available for interested parties to design their own bouquets to take home.








Washed Ashore

Its been a while but its looking like I need to catch up on some past experiences, namely my 2013 summer artist residency with Washed Ashore.

This is one impacting organization with a heart of gold. This art is all about the environment. Bandon, OR is its base location and being a coastal Southern Oregon town it is in a heavy trash location for the tides bringing in debris from the Pacific ocean, especially after the tsunami in Japan.

Volunteers pick up trash and assemble panels that are later added onto the sculptures at their downtown gallery and community work space. Artists residents travel 8 miles south of the downtown to the main workspace. Here Simple trash washing and sorting stations are situated around Yurts used for workspace. Main volunteers assist with the bodies and bases of the installations while lead artist and founder, Angela Pozzie, creates the heads of all of the animals and monitors the works of her understudy interns.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds of trash have already been collected from the shores within a 20 mile radius of Bandon. Not only has this trash been removed from nature but it has been kept from sitting in the landfills.

Here are a couple sculptures I assisted with during my artist residency with Washed Ashore in Bandon, OR.

Angela Pozzie is an incredible environmental artist and it was such an honor working alongside her.

Please check out their website at washedashore.org for more info!

This puffin sculpture was working on by quite a few artists but in this particular photo the body of the puffin was created by this gal...



Here is a massive Jellyfish sculpture. The body/base was done by yours truly.