Southsider is highlighting some of our favorite arts and cultural events and programming in our 2024 best of summer series. For us, “Insidious Plastics” at The Nurture Nature Center makes the cut as it provided the community the opportunity to learn about their impact on the environment with a beautiful and informative arts-infused exhibition.
Just a short walk from Easton’s Centre Square sits The Nurture Nature Center (NNC), a space dedicated to fostering science, art, and community dialogue in Easton and beyond. The NNC was opened to the public in 2011 after major floods of the Delaware River revealed a need for public education surrounding flood prevention and preparation. Since its inception, the NNC has focused on environmental issues in northeastern Pennsylvania and the globe, including educational programming on topics such as climate change and local food access. Because NNC leaders believe in the power of art to inspire conversations about the environment, they also work with artists to create exhibitions, live performances, poetry readings, community-based art projects, and other programming to engage Lehigh Valley residents.
Perspectives: Art on Environment is a recurring series produced at NCC. This on-going series brings artists, community members, and scientists together to create art around a centralized topic in order to showcase “new ways of seeing and relating to the world.” I spoke with Keri Maxfield, Art Director of the NNC, who stated that the exhibit meets visitors at their current level of environmental knowledge and provides educational opportunities to learn more about the selected theme of each exhibition.
NNC’s summer 2024 exhibition was called “Insidious Plastics.” Those involved in the creation of the exhibition noted the convenience and ease that plastic afforded the world. This convenience quickly turned to disaster, however, as plastic embedded itself in our daily lives before we fully understood the damage microplastics would have on our bodies and the environment. The “Insidious Plastics” exhibition sought to reveal our plastic usage to us, including how dependent upon plastics our societies have become and how damaging plastics are for human and environmental health. Rather than criticizing visitors for not being aware of their plastic usage, the exhibition encouraged visitors to take a good look at their own lives and recognize the positive changes they can make to lessen the grip plastics have on them. The art pieces in the exhibit ranged from poetry, paintings, found objects, or photography. Housed on both the first and third floors of the NNC, the exhibition was stunning from the moment visitors walked into the room.
When visitors walked into the exhibition, they encountered a painted river on the floor that represents the Delaware River (see the above image). Written into the wave of the river were lines from the poem “Ode to the Delaware” by local poets Lynn Alexander and Cleveland Wall. The poem explores the power of the river as it impacts both the humans and wildlife who live near its banks. The painted river served as an entryway into the exhibition as visitors rode its waves deeper into the NCC to encounter artworks that explore the impact of plastic on our region. Above the painted river hung fish netting filled not with trout, but instead with used plastic container lids decorated with sea life designs. This plastic installation, titled “Life on the Surface,” was assembled by Kate Dodd and community members. Visitors almost felt like trapped fish themselves as they stood beneath the netting, with the lights above shifting between motley blues, browns, and blacks from the colorful sea life designs on the plastic lids. This work, hanging above the Delaware River on the floor, forced visitors to acknowledge the plastic pollution that muddles the river and captures the aquatic life within its waves. The net filled with plastic showed that we have failed to honor that river in the way that Alexander and Wall promote in their “Ode to the Delaware.” Such inconsistencies stressed the need for visitors to look at their own plastic usage and change their habits to cut down the amount of plastic that threatens the beauty of the Delaware River. Such promptings could be found in other poetry covering the walls, such as “Heavier Than Fish” by Cleveland Wall:
Poems like this one were paired with mixed media artworks and found objects, items that weren’t initially intended for artistic use. In using these found objects, artists sent the dual message that trash is never only trash and that we perhaps should not be so careless in what we consume and throw away.
Visual pieces like the ones pictured below placed an emphasis on the ability of found objects to push viewers to question their own plastic usage. The frame for Don Wilson’s “Patient Earth” was stuffed with plastic such as the infamous disposable straws that have become symbols of plastic pollution. The entire painting was encased in convenient yet deadly plastic, framing the natural life within. Lynn Alexander’s poem placed just above Wilson’s work emphasized this constricted nature, as Alexander’s words of plastic pollution mirrored how Wilson’s painting trapped plastic with a web of strings that strangled the piece. Similarly, “Sandcastle Story” by Pam Danko-Stout and Terry Stout displayed an intricately decorated sandcastle like ones we might have made at the beach in childhood, but it was adorned with tiny pieces of plastic that often find themselves in the stomachs of wildlife. Our trash created striking art within this sandcastle, but the artists still reminded us that this is our trash. The typical decorations adorning sandcastles are seashells found along the shore, but the brightly colored shards of plastic in this piece represented an unnatural invasion that solely came from humans.
There were many more pieces in the exhibition beyond those photographed here that called for reflection on “insidious plastics” and how they impact the world. Originally open for two months, the Insidious Plastics exhibition received such attention and interest that it was extended through August of 2024. Because of the ethos of community engagement and attention to collaborating with regional artists, future exhibitions at the NNC promise to be as exciting and as beautiful as this one. Check out their webpage to learn more about current exhibitions and programming. The NNC is an important educational space that calls residents to reflect upon our responsibility to address environmental issues. This organization reminds us that it’s our duty to address our impact on the planet and to take better care of it in the future.
