‘Found Art’ Show Heralds Earth Day

By Kendra Bobowick

Bulbs’ tips pushing through the ground are reaching for spring, which arrives Saturday, and with the season’s change come preparations for Earth Day 2010.

Adding an artistic touch to the annual celebration is a Recycled Art Show sponsored by the Cultural Arts Commission and show coordinator Rob Kaiser.

“I’d love to see some outrageous art from my friends,” he said, adding, the show is open to students, adults, or anyone interested is creating art. Passing around a flyer recently, the announcement explains, “Any solution to the host of concerns facing our ecology will rely, in no small part, on creative solutions.” Seated at a bistro table in his Mocha Coffeehouse, Mr Kaiser “encouraged” participants to “find creative use for waste materials.”

The flyer makes an appeal to “artists of all ages,” who are invited to “turn trash to art. Utilizing a tiny portion of the vast supply of post consumer waste choking our landfills … we hope to inspire all Newtown to ‘reuse, recycle and reinvent.”

With one example of artwork built from recyclable material he referred to a past Green Man that he had shaped from plastic milk cartons. Using the bends and curves in the plastic to mold an oversized head, he named the piece “Green Man.”

About this type of “found art,” he said, “I love it. It’s not precious, not on a wall and not framed.” The value is in the process, he said. The pieces are “utilitarian.”

For Mr Kaiser, art is tactile. “I’ll play with a medium,” he said. With an inclination to “play with found objects,” he described part of his creative thinking. “I’ll be somewhere, on a beach or a patch of woods and something comes to me.

An example? A bottle of bleach covered in dryer sheets. He built facial features by using different colored lint, “slathered with glue.”

Visit NewtownEarthDay.com to learn more about the day and the art contest. Sign-up forms also are available at this website. Mr Kaiser said that registration is free, but he needs to know how many participants are joining the show.

All artwork should be submitted/delivered to the Newtown Earth Day Festival at the Newtown Middle School, 11 Queen Street, by 9 am on Saturday, April 24.

Neither Newtown Earth Day nor the Newtown Cultural Arts Commission can assume any responsibility for stolen, lost, or damaged artwork in or around the festival. Exhibits need to be removed by 5 pm the same day.

Glancing ahead to next month, he said, “The main thing is to promote Earth Day.” A newer event, the third annual Newtown Earth Day is “really nice,” he said. “It’s bigger each year.”

He welcomes the chance to combine green efforts, the arts commission, and creating art, he said.