The Disk Project & “Sea Change”
"Reclaiming the Beach”
Gallery Talk
In April a wastewater treatment plant under construction in Westchester
accidentally released approximately 21 million plastic disks into the Long
Island Sound. Hundreds of thousands of these ended up on the beaches of
the North Shore of Long Island. Artists Barbara Karyo and Sally Shore were
some of those involved in cleaning the plastic up from the beach. Both
decided to create works of art from the disks, “turning flotsam into beauty,”
in the words of Ms. Shore. They will both discuss their intentions and
methods in a talk, “Reclaiming the Beach,” at 2:00 pm on Sunday, June 12
at the Jeanie Tengelsen Gallery of the Art League of Long Island. The public
is invited.
Disk Fish by Barbara Karyo
“A small group of volunteers from the Coalition to Save Hempstead Harbor
spent one hour hand picking up the plastic disks from our local beaches,”
explained Ms. Karyo. “We collected over 25,000. As I was collecting them I
was thinking of how I could use them to make a statement about how we
abuse the environment and the creatures that inhabit it. My project is to
construct a very big fish using the disks as the body. The head of the fish is
made from crocheted plastic bags. Members of the community and other
artists joined me to tie thousands of these disks together.”
Ms. Shore stated, “In trying to find a way to re-purpose these water filtration
disks, I considered how I had found many of them: tangled up in the straw,
shells and sea weed at the high tide line along the beaches where I collected
them. Tying them together with narrow ribbons in the colors of vegetation
was the most satisfying of my solutions. I had envisioned them being seen
from both sides hanging at the gallery as a false ceiling, floating, as if on the
surface of the water of Long Island Sound. The project also works quite well
as a two-sided partition.”
Disk Fish
60” x 14” Diam.
Plastic water filtration disks, plastic food bags, beach ball.
“Sea Change”
“Sea Change”, an underwater installation by Sally Shore and Barbara Grossman Karyo,
will be on view from September 2013 through July 2014 in the atrium at Tilles Center
for Performing Arts at LIU Post. Taking advantage of the aquarium-like atmosphere of
the glass Atrium, “Sea Change” evokes the experience of being underwater with
creatures and vegetation that have been created with some of the detritus invading our
natural environment.
The impetus for the project occurred in March 2011 when a waste treatment plant in
Westchester accidentally released millions of plastic water filtration disks into the Long
Island Sound and they were washing up on beaches all along the north shore of Long
Island, NY.
A call for help went out to members of the Coalition to Save Hempstead Harbor. Two
local artists, Sally Shore and Barbara Karyo, were members of the team that picked up,
in the course of an hour, approximately 23,000 disks from Tappen and Sea Cliff
beaches in Nassau County. Standing amid the bulging bags of disks the friends looked
at each other and simultaneously declared ”I’m going to do something with these.”
Sally Shore works primarily with fiber and Barbara Karyo works primarily in clay. For the
initial project Sally incorporated ribbons and other fibers with the disks to recreate the
experience of finding piles of them caught in and under the seaweed on the beach.
Barbara, who had been playing with crocheting plastic, incorporated that material with
the disks to create a large fish with the intention of towing it to Mamaroneck, hoping
to draw attention to the possible ecological disaster that might occur with the
ingestion of the disks by fish and birds.
As a result of applying for a grant from Art Under Glass, the project was expanded to
become an installation. Sally created the surface of the water filled with rainbows of
sensuous vegetation and Barbara crocheted a variety of large, whimsical creatures to
swim through it.
“Sea Change II “
OMNI Gallery October 2014- January 2015
