Keene State art students from two of Professor Emily Lambert’s painting courses have made treasures out of trash with their work currently featured in the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center until March 9, 2024.
The exhibit is inspired by the works of Aurora Robson, who is known for her work with waste materials, according to Lambert. The Brattleboro Museum is currently exhibiting Robson’s work in a “Human Nature Walk” exhibit, according to the museum’s website.
Lambert said she made contact with the museum’s staff last year and had her students at the time create ice shanties that were displayed at the facility. This time, they invited her students to create pieces “in response” to Robson’s work.
Students created a wide variety of assemblages out of trash, ranging from aesthetically pleasing to politically stimulating, according to Lambert. The intention behind the project was inspired by the idea of cleaning up the Ashuelot River.
Sierra Winand, a junior whose work is part of the exhibit, said she was inspired by the shapes in Robson’s work. She said she also took part in the ice shanty project from last year and cited nature as a common theme in her own work.
“[Robson created] all these natural shapes, but they were made out of such harsh material, like plastic,” Winand said.
Winand said she took notice of the protective foil linings that cover the openings of yogurt bottles and decided to experiment with those. Therefore, Winand created a bouquet of flowers out of the foil.
Winand added that students working on the project would sometimes leave excess materials they had collected, but were not using, out on a table. That way, their classmates could take the materials and use them in their own projects.
Camila Sanz, a senior whose work is also in the exhibit, created a representation of a fairy using paper from receipts and fabric from old clothes.
“It was a nice piece,” Sanz said. “It has no glue; everything was sewed or put in with metal [fasteners].”
Lambert said the class began with a series of smaller projects before creating their assemblages. These projects included still-life drawing of trash the students found around campus as well as both still-life and plein-air drawing by the side of the Ashuelot River.
The original plan for the project had been for the students to source their materials from the Ashuelot, helping to clean the river in the process, according to Lambert. Pouring rain on the day of the river clean-up prevented this plan from being realized, but the project continued in another form.
“We learned … it’s not only in the river,” Lambert said. “Anything in the park will end up in the waterway, so students looked at their own waste stream and trash and picked up trash around campus and then made different pieces from it.”
Charlotte King can be contacted at
cking@kscequinox.com
