2021 Smithsonian Craft Show

I am honored to be included among 100 artists in this year’s Smithsonian Craft Show, online on Bidsquare October 23 through 31, 2021. This is a fundraiser for the Smithsonian Women’s Committee, which organizes and runs this showcase of fine American craft, taking a percent of sales to help support programs throughout the Smithsonian Institution with grants.

These two new recycled birds are covered with reused cocktail napkins.

I have a used few new covering materials for birds in this show. After collecting the stickers on produce for about 6 months, I had enough to sort and get picky to complete a few for the show.

I also have a few larger bird sculptures in this show. Using the same method as for the smaller bird, using cardboard and paper headed for the recycling bin and found materials like wire left over from workshops and other projects, they are much more imposing than the little messenger birds in this series. I am excited about this new direction!

This ibis-like bird is about 12” tall. It is covered with admission tickets left over after a school event, and it is mounted on the top of a tea tin.

When it rains, it pours - Art Optimism at the Athenaeum, Alexandria, VA

I am honored to be included in the Art Optimism show at the Athenaeum Gallery in Alexandria, VA, September-October, 2021.

My work seems to be hitting a chord with the current interest in “optimism” as it relates to craft that is working toward a positive change in how we view resources and also in our outlook toward possible improvements in our use of materials. Last April, I took part in Craft Optimism (a beautiful show presented by the Smithsonian Women’s Committee). And now, one of my recycled paper collages, Geology, has been accepted into the show at the Athenaeum. This collage includes found papers, reused pieces of paper from old projects, and newly recycled paper cast on found objects to make bas relief forms, all mounted on a panel that is a reused Masonite shelf. I am very excited to see the other works in this show, curated with the keen eye of Twig Murray, Gallery Director and President of the Board of Directors of the Athenaeum.

Geology, 2020

OMG, time flies!

August 2021. How did that happen?

I will cut right to the chase and tell you what is happening soon, with a note about what has already happened:

This October, I will be participating in the Smithsonian Craft Show (October 23-31), which will be held online through Bidsquare. This is the “original” high-end craft show, but also (for those following my work) a followup to the wonderful show I participated in this past April - Craft Optimism - an eco-conscious stand-in for the usual Smithsonian Craft Show, which had been delayed, due to COVID.

So, I am thrilled to have been included in both, and with my recycled birds! The October show is not yet online, but if you check out Bidsquare, it will be pretty easy to find (search for my name or the Smithsonian Craft Show) once the show is live. If you want more information, please feel free to contact me directly. Also, I hope/plan to post more info here as it becomes available.

That is plenty of good news, but I have something else to share. This month, an article about me and my birds was published in Mountain Living magazine (I think in response to my involvement in the Craft Optimism show in April). Since this article hit subscribers’ homes mid-August, I have been inundated with sales and orders! So, apologies if you have visited the site and seem few birds currently for sale. I am working on it! Making birds as fast as I can. But also, I am trying to keep up with new commissions and I am still completing some orders from April and May related to the Craft Optimism show.

No complaints. This is a wonderful place to be! I am making scads of birds in preparation for the show and in response to the added demand from the article. If you don’t see what you want on the site, please do contact me. I am always happy to have guidance for which birds to make next. And I do welcome commissions.

Onward!

Beyond Garbage Project Reboot

New Projects in Troubled Times

Recycled bird covered with empty 5-lb flour packaging - one of many hard-to-find grocery items these days (and yes, for sale)

Ste Tura de Lanier, posing with hope and patience by the back door.

Let’s try this again….

I rebooted the Beyond Garbage Project last month. Woohoo! I always enjoy finding ways to reuse material to avoid throwing it out or divert it, at least momentarily, from the recycling bin. March 2020, at the beginning of the US lockdown during the covid-19 pandemic, seemed like the perfect time to energize people about using their trash in creative ways. We were off to a great start and had all that extra time (if we were unemployed) or were looking for creative ways to say at home.

As usual, I jumped straight in with enthusiasm and energy. As usual, I got overwhelmed and backed off after a few weeks. Some of this had to do with realizing I had to think a few things through in order to do this right (or in a way that supports my lower sustained energy). Some of this had to do with a lack of obvious connection with people “out there” (with a few fabulous exceptions!). Part of this had to do with underestimating how much my life has changed, even if it seems in many ways to be the same. I am a self-employed artist who is used to working at home and my husband is still employed, also used to working from home. Not much has really changed. And yet it has. Overwhelmingly. I needed to take time to breath, make a few masks, mourn the passing of my dear old dog, and get some real sleep.

I will continue to post about my explorations but with NO deadlines and no promises of what is to come next. The pressure from my own self-imposed requirements shut me down completely - so enough of that!

I am going to add posts here to point to the two projects I did start (mailing envelopes and cardboard). And I will try to continue to publish posts and pages that refer to each other as I move along through other materials. I know I am going to do something with elements from tea bags. I am also slowly preparing a shibori project, and that involves refurbishing some old clothes with stains and rips instead of throwing them away.

Thanks for joining me on this journey and I hope you stick around!

Stay safe and well and don’t forget to look around you - there’s still a lot of wonder out there.

Blink, and the world changes

Spreading art, not fear.

In 2009, I started a blog called Beyond Garbage that explored ways to reuse common materials that we often throw away or recycle. At first, a small group of like-minded artists played with materials and posted images of what we made. It was only mildly successful since we were all very busy. But we had fun and that exercise jumpstarted what is now a major focus of my work and the inspiration for this site.

Through the years I added occasional posts about artists and exhibitions with work related to that theme. In 2015, I have myself a challenge to make a thing a day with the goal of trying to focus on reusing materials. I lasted about a month. It was fun, but kind of exhausting. I encourage any of you to try it. I learned so much about my work habits, attention span, and need for flexibility. That project is also documented on the site as 2015 Thing-A-Day Challenge.

When I started this site, I had the intention to blog more often. But hey, I am learning to accept that my attention ebbs and flows, mostly depending on urgency. I am sure I am not alone in this.

Well, urgency just hit again. As of last week [this was written in mid-March], the spread of the coronavirus known as COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic and many countries around the world are implementing practices of social distancing to avoid the spread of this new and daunting infection. Schools and businesses are closing, we hope only temporarily. This could be over in a few weeks, or drag on for months. It’s really hard to tell right now.

My go-to response in times like this is to find focus and escape by creating and exploring with my brain and my hands. And since I am mostly an extrovert, I like to share and my first inclination is to figure out a way to connect. So, here I am again, trying to get other people excited about reusing and recycling materials, not only by seeing what I make, but by making things themselves. Learning about the material world around them. Paying attention to things over which we might have some control over in a world that feels, right now, pretty out of whack.

The Project

I will be proposing a material approximately once each week (maybe more often, maybe less - who knows?) - common materials that most people are likely to have lying around (maybe accumulating faster than usual as many of us work from home). Participants are encouraged to play with the material and give feedback - images of work in progress, finished work, images you find of other people’s art (properly attributed) that uses that material, etc. I will supply some guidance about the materials, some suggestions for how to use it, some vocabulary words that relate to the material (especially for people who are hoping to use the project as an adjunct to homeschooling their kids), and some images of work that might provide inspiration.

I hope that this will give people an easy entry into making and creating a contemplative space as we restructure our lives. I hope it will also be a good diversion to think about our place in the world as a whole and how we can make it better, more beautiful, and less full of waste.

I also hope that, with Earth Day coming on April 22, we can collectively work toward a goal that can contribute to that celebration of the planet we inhabit. It may just be that our output from these exercises adds to the global consciousness. But perhaps there is energy for something more. I am open to any ideas about that.

Sharing

I have started a new Instagram account - @beyondgarbageproject - and encourage people who participate to tag it when they post so we can all see what we are making. I am still figuring out whether/how to post to this site and the Beyond Garbage site - is that really necessary in these times of social media?

Using the hashtag #beyondgarbageproject will also help people follow our work. And I have started using the hashtag #spreadartnotfear in a wider context to encourage people to think about helping create positive connection when so many of us are isolated from each another.

Plastic Straws

I have been collecting plastic straws over the past year or so. Because they are straight, hollow, and flexible and come in colors, they could be an ideal material for one of my bird’s nests or some other work. And the controversy over plastic straws as ocean waste (that awful image of a straw stuck in the nostril of a sea turtle…) heightened public awareness of casual straw use as superfluous and harmful. So straws were an obvious choice for me to use for my work: colorful, readily available as used material, and politically relevant.

As of January 2019, Washington, DC, made it harder for me to find straws, since they have instituted a ban on them at restaurants in response to the outcry over their contribution to ocean waste. Even though straws actually are only a small portion of the plastic waste we produce, their shape and size can be particularly devastating when they are waste, so I don’t have a big problem with banning them. They are, for the most part, a luxury, and there are paper and metal alternatives for people who really need straws in their lives - people who have had jaw surgery, for example. And ice cream sodas wouldn’t be half as much fun without a straw, but maybe paper or metal straws can replace the plastic ones, especially if yo heat/drink quickly.

But without plastic straws at restaurants, my supply would swindle! Fortunately (or not!), I have a reliable source of used straws. My friend Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith is living with ALS - believe me, she needs use plastic straws, no question about it. She and her mom, Karin, are saving straws for me to use in my artwork. Lindsay is an amazing artist and healer. Here are her links, in case you want to learn more about her. Her videos about living in isolation have been very centering and comforting to me during the pandemic.

Paper or Plastic? Installation Summer 2019

Paper or Plastic? Takoma Park Community Center, 2019

Detail of Paper or Plastic?

In the summer of 2019, I got to use some of my straws in an installation called Paper or Plastic? at the Takoma Park Community Center. The piece addressed the themes of personal choice (online or printed newspapers, paper vs plastic grocery bags or straws) – how we consume the news (and other things), literally and figuratively. I fused layers of plastic newspaper sleeves from the Washington Post and New York Times, and strung the square collages together with reclaimed plastic straws as spacers to create a structure reminiscent of both the assembly machinery for newspapers and prayer flags. The colors change gradually and slightly over time, each morning presenting the newspaper subscribers with a new shade, but the change seems inconsequential and has nothing to do with the news content it protects.

I am intrigued by the large potential impact of small tendencies or habits on our environment, in this case, the impulse to carefully preserve the daily paper by wrapping it in plastic. As we read in the hardcopy newspaper about the impacts of increasingly overwhelming plastic garbage and the effects of plastic production, we are left with flimsy but beautiful bits of plastic that, even if it can be recycled, often end up as microplastics in the very environments we are learning about.

I Can't Breathe....

This bird is covered with the paper insert from an Advair asthma inhaler. My husband and daughter both have asthma and use an inhaler occasionally, so it is easy for me to collect the inserts and they have been a part of my life for many years now. I am fascinated with the long lists of symptoms and side effects on medical inserts, as well as the chemical structures they sometimes include. It seemed obvious to use the inserts to cover birds - canaries in a coal mine, as it were, for various common diseases and medical conditions.  

But when I started finding empty cigarette packs in my neighborhood, I made the (perhaps obvious) connection between Eric Garner and the asthma inhaler inserts. So I created a pedestal out of the empty packs, turning the Advair bird into a monument to invisible, and sometimes deadly, afflictions (physical or societal).

Who knows whether Eric Garner would have survived being choked by the police if he hadn't had asthma. But he was supposedly selling cigarettes illegally when he was stopped by police. And, ironically, he suffered from asthma and was already out of breath from reportedly helping break up a fight earlier. His obesity added to the stress on his body, as well.

But beyond the literal connections among cigarettes, asthma, and inhalers, I find myself thinking often recently about Eric Garner's death while repeatedly saying "I can't breathe." It is a metaphor for the overwhelming odds against success that many black men face in the US. Pressures, literal and figurative, on their bodies and minds make it so difficult for them to be seen for who they are and live as accepted and respected beings in a society that seems to be looking only for reasons to fear them.  

I don't speak the language - (Im)migration Birds

What was originally intended to be a simpler piece about the beauty and mystery of languages written in unfamiliar alphabets has become an acknowledgement of the hurdles immigrants to the US have to overcome through both spoken and written language. 

I was just going to make a bird covered with Korean Hangul writing from a found newspaper, but while I was looking for a visually compelling portion of characters, I found a full-page ad(?) or article(?) about immigration to the US. The Arabic numerals sprinkled throughout (and appearing occasionally on this bird) are US immigration form numbers. The header was in English, otherwise, I wouldn’t have known the topic, since I couldn’t read anything else.

And so, this is also a meditation on presumptions the locally dominant(?) culture makes about interactions w other cultures in our community and the privilege of those who speak and read English in this country (even if it is the only language they speak and whether or not that is wise).

Simplicity and Chaos

Simplicity. Even though I tell myself that it is the goal, I find that I am drawn toward complexity instead. Clarity, for me, lies in acknowledging the chaos and the intertwined nature of things and pursuits, rather than trying to separate them and hone down to their essence.

This site is actually my second art site. I can't shed the first one - jbeelsdesign.com - because I still make that work. But it occupies a different part of my brain and my practice. So, instead of presenting a clear, branded body of work, I have opted to distract and pile on the information. As usual. 

The stone in the image above distills many aspects of my work. It is a single object, probably created by someone who only knows a little about the philosophy or culture the symbol comes from, that grabs onto an appealing idea and spits it out into yet another context. Among may options for ideas to be guided by, I glommed onto it since, rather than be guided by a stone that says "love" or "peace" (both totally worthy goals), I'd rather be reminded that control is not really possible, just acceptance and acknowledgement of the chaos around us.

In life, I look for patterns and bits of understanding, common references or impulses, but acknowledge that my focus will change, the context will change, the material world will change, and that is all OK. In my work, I revel in finding news ways to look at moments in the world, as it changes - ways to capture common points of interest or twist familiar information to make the world shine more brightly.