What do you get when you send five artists dressed in safety gear into a room for six months to sift through a steady stream of trash? The answer will be revealed at GLEAN, an environmental art exhibit at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center of Portland. The goal of the show, slated to run from Sept. 14 through 30, is to prompt people to think about how to create more and waste less.
With degrees in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and Portland State University, Sarah Wolf Newlands has been in several group and solo exhibitions and featured in many publications. An assistant professor in the Department of University Studies at PSU, she currently teaches courses in drawing, painting and contemporary art history.
The art of inspiration for Newlands’ work comes from a variety of sources, from layers of cloth in a 20th century Egungun mask created by the Yoruba Peoples of Nigeria, to books about and quotes by famous artists. During her GLEAN residency, she traveled to the Smithsonian Museum where she saw "Rainbow Serpent" an enormous sculpture by Romuald Hazoumé made of oil jerry cans on exhibit at the National Museum of African Art. Back in Portland, sorting through piles of rubbish at Metro Central Transfer Station, Newlands found "fragile beauty" in a dead, but perfectly intact butterfly that turned up inside a box of truck tail lights at the transfer station.
Layer by layer, she uncovers familiar things – clothing, curtains, socks – and arranges them into formal compositions. Reflecting on the process, she explains, "In our meaning-making work, we pick through the ruins, put things together, and stalk our muse."
GLEAN is a public, private, nonprofit partnership between Metro, the regional government that guides the region’s garbage and recycling system; Recology, an employee-owned company that manages resource recovery facilities; and Cracked Pots, an environmental arts group that manages the program. Now in its second year, GLEAN takes its inspiration from Recology San Francisco’s renowned artist in residence program.
The artists, selected by a jury of arts and environmental professionals, include Andrew Auble, Chandra Glaeseman, Greg Hanson, Jennifer LaMastra and Sarah Wolf Newlands. Reflecting the diversity of talent in the Portland region’s creative class, the group consists of instructors at area art schools, graduates of well-known universities and an art therapist. They are award winning professionals whose works have been in solo and group shows – locally and nationally.
Their work ranges from sculpture to mixed media assemblage to wearable art. They use modern and archaic forms, altering the commonplace into non-traditional and sometimes formal compositions.
The process of creating pieces and the transformation going on in the artists and their studios is compelling stuff. The artists have a blog and frequently muse about their adventures and experiences.