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An Outdoor Exhibit
Location: Formerly Throughout the Grounds
This exhibition brought together six artists who create work from what many people would consider trash: salvaged fishing gear, cardboard, plastic bags and bottles, beach debris, rusted metal. These outdoor artworks shine a light on the impacts of waste and pollution in our coastal communities and the ways that we can help.
Trash, by definition, is something that is no longer useful or wanted by someone. However, most of what we throw away can be used, reused or remade. Paper makes more paper. Glass and aluminum can turn into more bottles and cans. Textiles can be processed into usable fibers. At waste-to-energy facilities, trash can even generate electricity.
The average American produces 7.1 lbs. of trash a week, or 102 tons in a lifetime. How much is that? A space shuttle. A blue whale. Your house. Here on Cape Cod, we produce about 85,000 tons of waste per year. Some is recycled. Most is not. Where your trash goes is dependent on what it is and your community’s waste management plan. Almost none of our waste stays here on the Cape.
As costs increase and storage and processing capacities do not, communities and individuals must turn to innovative solutions. Perhaps the most innovative thing we can do is to RETHINK the way we think about trash: it’s not trash at all–it’s someone else’s treasure. Featuring the work of Michelle Lougee, Gin Stone, Nicolas Nobili, Cindy Pease Roe, Dylan Gauthier, and Sue Beardsley.
This exhibit was generously sponsored by the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod.
Michelle Lougee
Michelle Lougee is a fiber artist and sculptor based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Made of discarded plastics, Lougee’s meticulously crafted sculptures address the impact of our consumerist society on nature. Her work reflects our increasingly precarious relationship with the planet by contrasting the material with forms and images sourced from nature, ranging from the microscopic to the aquatic, terrestrial, aerial, and more. Lougee teaches at Lesley University School of Art and Design and is represented by the Boston Sculptors Gallery. She maintains a studio at Vernon Street Studios in Somerville, Massachusetts. Learn more about Michelle.
Gin Stone
Gin Stone is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on fiber and mixed media constructions. Her materials include hand-dyed commercially fished line and ghost gear, recycled and antique textiles, fabric printed with cyanotype emulsions and found objects. Stone has shown her work in galleries and museums throughout the Northeast including the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Cambridge Art Association, and the Attleboro Arts Museum. Recent awards include grants from the Rauschenberg Foundation, the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod, the Awesome Foundation and the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. Stone lives in Massachusetts and is represented at On Center Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts. Learn more about Gin.
Nicolas Nobili
Born in Winchester, Massachusetts, Nicolas went to public school in Marshfield on Boston’s South Shore, but considers Eastham, Cape Cod to be where he was raised. Now, this is where he lives on what was once his maternal grandmother’s property with his wife, four children, and dog. In 1988, he graduated from Dartmouth College with honors as a studio art major and art history minor. He has build, rebuilt and renovated a number of houses, worked as a sailboat deckhand and first mate, as a landscaper, freelance photographer, fine art photographic color printer, sculpture studio and wood shop assistant, a fine art handler, museum preparator, and silkscreen/ screen printing technician. Recent exhibitions include Cape Cod Museum of Art and the Provincetown Art Association. Nobili was able to ‘relive’ his childhood experiences last year through a week-long artist residency with the Peaked Hill Trust where he lived in a dune shack in the Provincelands in Provincetown, MA. Learn more about Nicolas.
Cindy Pease Roe
As an artist, educator and marine advocate, Cindy Roe takes inspiration from her deep, immovable kinship with the sea to craft her work. She is the founder and creator of UpSculpt, a socially disruptive educational movement that supports the creation of art from marine debris. Sculpting out of marine debris has become the driving force behind her career, and serves most effectively to support her message as an eco-artist. Roe has shown her work in venues throughout the northeast and abroad including St. Joseph’s College, New York, the U.S. Embassy, Beijing, China, The Sag Harbor Whaling Museum, and the Montauk Ocean Institute. She lives and works in Greenport, New York. Learn more about Cindy.
Dylan Gauthier
Activating a range of media including sound, performance, video, sculpture, architecture, and photography, Dylan Gauthier’s research-based and collaborative projects explore the intersections between waterways, architecture, landscape, and ecological loss. Gauthier’s individual and collective projects have been exhibited at a variety of venues both in the US and abroad including the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, the Parrish Art Museum, CCVA at Harvard University, Columbus College of Art and Design, and the Walker Art Center. Gauthier has taught at Hunter College, Parsons, The New School and at Mass Art. He lives and works in both New York City, New York and Brewster, Massachusetts. Learn more about Dylan.
Sue Beardsley
Sue Beardsley resides on Cape Cod and has been making art since she left her career as a psychotherapist over twenty years ago. She creates her work from materials that have been left for the trash heap, including glass, metals, fiber, wood, and plastics. Each work, thus, is a statement of her fervent desire that we as a society stop the waste cycle and find creative ways to use “unusable” goods. Beardsley has participated in many shows over the years, both solo and as part of a group. Many of her recycled metal and glass pieces grace the byways and hallways of Cape Cod. She also teaches classes on glasswork and welding. Learn more about Sue.
