After each of the approximately 1,000 performances the Portland Center for the Performing Arts (PCPA) hosts each year, hundreds of pages of promotional materials are left to be recycled. Local artist Stacy Smith has found a creative way to this turn waste into beautiful and thought provoking art. Last April, Stacy asked PCPA for its used posters. Embracing the project as a way to further its mission of promoting local art and encouraging sustainability, PCPA gladly donated all the materials it could.
Though PCPA has supported local performing arts companies and artists for years, Smith's project was the first opportunity for PCPA to support art through leftovers. The resulting project, entitled Accumulate, will transform about 8,000 articles of promotional materials (mostly posters and handbills) into a large installation art piece to be hosted at Disjecta, a North Portland contemporary art gallery.
Smith, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has a reputation for collecting the residue of Portland's art community and making it into something new. For her, the end of one artistic endeavor can be seen as the beginning of the next. "Accumulate," she says, is "a testament to the active Portland arts community while exploring the nature of the creative endeavor. Although each promotional print will entropy, the mass is routinely renewed."
Currently Smith is collecting materials dating back to 2009 from venues including concert halls, performing art centers and record stores as well as directly from the designers. PCPA is happy to be one of the top contributors to Smith's collection, as well as one of the more supportive organizations in her artful championing of communication, connection and being found. Accumulate will be installed in the Vestibule located inside Disjecta, a contemporary gallery located near North Interstate Avenue, from Nov. 19th – Dec. 19th.