Playing with plastic

Early last year, linkurl:Anna Hepler,;http://www.annahepler.com/ a Portland, Maine installation artist, filled a gallery with undulating layers of woven plastic. The rich, latticed structure hung from the walls in the shape of a ship's hull, the blue and white material's translucence highlighted by the room's huge sunlit windows. Anna Hepler Image: Doug Jones But the structure -- so large that visitors of the linkurl:Center for Maine Contemporary Art,;http://www.artsmaine.org/ where the exhibit

Anna Hepler
Image: Doug Jones

But the structure -- so large that visitors of the linkurl:Center for Maine Contemporary Art,;http://www.artsmaine.org/ where the exhibit was on display, had to crouch to pass underneath it -- was more than just a new exhibit from the acclaimed visual artist. It was created entirely with recycled plastics in response to scientists' exploration of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The garbage patch swirls 1000 miles from the California coast in a convergence of currents known as the North Pacific Gyre. As trash floats towards the gyre, it gets sucked into the calm center of the vortex and accumulates there. Decades of non-biodegradable plastics washed into the ocean from Asia and North America are pulled into the huge eddy, forming a floating landfill about the size of Texas. Other ocean gyres scattered across the globe have similar marine wastelands at their centers. In the past few years, scientists have traveled to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to study the chemical interactions between marine life and the debris and to test methods of collecting the trash. Intrigued by the artistic potential of plastic for years, Hepler knew she wanted to experiment with the material, and agreed to do a room-sized installation using plastic for the Rockport, Maine gallery. Her first stop was Home Depot, for sheets of plastic she could rip up. But as she worked on the project she started hearing about the floating landfill in the Pacific Ocean. "It was insane to think about buying virgin sheet plastic and adding to the problem," she said. "So, I headed to my local salvage yard instead and managed to get more than half of my materials in one run." Since creating the structure, named "Gyre" and measuring approximately 45 feet long by 15 feet wide, Hepler has continued to work with recycled plastics. "Plastic's color and translucency had always fascinated me," she said. "And once I embark on work with certain materials, I like to see where it takes me."

Recently, Hepler has been creating inflated balloon-like structures with salvaged pieces of plastic bags held together with tape. As air escapes through leaks in the seams and plastic, the structure deflates and transitions from a three-dimensional to two-dimensional form. She finds "super thin vegetable plastic bags from grocery stores" are best for the work. The visual artist is also preparing for a new version of Gyre, renamed "Great Haul." While she will use many of the same materials, the space in the linkurl:Portland Museum of Art;http://www.portlandmuseum.org/ where it will be exhibited is taller than the room at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art that held Gyre. So Hepler is planning to shape Great Haul into a droplet- or weaver bird nest-like form. She also wants to be "even less selective about the plastic materials... before I concentrated on using large sheets, but I think it would be interesting to incorporate smaller scale every day plastic into the mesh," as well as more locally-recognizable items, such as regional grocery store bags, she said. Great Haul linkurl:will be on display;http://www.portlandmuseum.org/Content/4450.shtml from July 24, 2010 to October 17, 2010 at the museum in Portland, Maine.
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