Environmental Art Project

When I watched the movie “Tides and Rivers” by Goldsworth many art projects came into mind. Because we needed to do a project similar to Goldsworth my mind instantly connected with different projects that I could do. Goldsworth used different pieces of nature to design a pure natural art.

When Goldsworth was on the beach building with rocks he made an egg shape. A few times he failed at making the design due to the lack of balance. I quickly thought about how I live on the beach and I’ve played with beach rocks since I was young. Off Portland harbor there is an island called Peaks Island. Many times when I’ve biked around the whole island, I see rocks stacked on top of each other. Another place that does this is in my hometown, Cape Elizabeth, the beach, Pond Cove. Many times when you’re driving down Shore Road, when you pass Pond Cove you’ll see people outside on the rocks trying to master the rock balancing structure. I wanted to go home so I could try this for myself but I never ended up being able to make it there. I didn’t have any ideas really for Farmington, Maine.

On Sunday, I was still out of luck. I wanted to make a unique piece of art but I couldn’t think of any ideas. All of the snow was filled with dirt and wasn’t nice and clean like it used to be. Everything was muddy and there was so much dirt left over from the plows when we had heavy storms. I didn’t know how I could make a nice looking art project.

I took my camera, put on my boots and went outside. Reid and I walked outside of Scott Hall and started looking around. The first thing that caught our eye was where everyone smokes there was a million cigarettes on the ground where the snow had melted. It was disgusting. There was a disposal station for them around seven feet away and the people smoking couldn’t even walk seven more feet to dispose of them correctly? I thought about doing some of the project using the half butts of the cigarettes but I couldn’t think of picking them up. We kept walking down the hill as if we were headed towards the Prescott Parking lot. When we were walking there, there was a ton of trash up on the hill. It gave off a bad vibe of Farmington. If I saw this a year ago today on accepted students day I honestly might rethink what I was doing, it was that gross. I thought that this would be a good art project using something to do with the trash. I found a twisted twig that looked “artsy” and reminded me of the movie “Rivers and Tides” and the shapes Goldsworth used. The twig was on the same hill as all of the trash so it made some sense. As I looked down from the hill while I was picking up the trash, I saw in a dirt parking lot, lots of potholes with muddy water filling them. This made so much sense. It is mud season, why not incorporate the season into the project as well!

The pothole puddle was a circle shape so I aligned the trash with the outside rim in the water. It was perfect size for the stick to be placed across the whole circle. It made the “anti-shape”, or a no symbol. For example the “anti-smoking” sign. In this case I thought that it would be a no littering sign, and I think that the project worked out well. I used nature and trash to show that littering is not okay, in a unique way. After I was done with the project I threw away the trash in the correct place for it then put the twisted twig back on the hill where I found it. This project, I think, was a really different way to connect with nature in a different perspective than I ever would have thought to do. I enjoyed it a lot!