Extra Credit Assignment: Sarah Kurtz

When attending After the Suburbs, an exhibit at the Kiang Gallery, I was intrigued by pieces in which the artists recycled different materials to express the importance of preserving nature. Amandine Drouet’s “Non-Disposable Flowers” are created from plastic bottles. The artist manipulates and distorts the plastic into exotic pieces of nature. The works are representations of how man-made items, which are normally broken-down and usually recycled to produce more consumer products, show appreciation for our natural surrounds through art. Though “pretty” pieces, they also represent the irony of giving back to nature. If we continue to destroy the wilderness, our only ability to connect with nature might come in the form of plastic flowers.

Nancy Vandevender’s “Greenery” is a fabric installation which appears to grow across walls and around corners. The artist uses flower and leaf patterned cotton fabrics to represent her idea of nature surviving and prevailing over human establishments. The ruffled strips of fabric have the illusion of vines crawling and growing throughout space. Though as humans it is our instinctual “nature” to control our surrounds, impose our “environments”, and change what has come before us, plant life has the ability to reclaim the earth eventually if something has been abandoned.

Both pieces express a sense of morphing artificially into nature. The earth’s ability to overcome change and manipulation is probable, either naturally or synthetically. Also conceivable, humans could destroy any existence of plant life, making sustainability obsolete.