I participated in the America SCORES Cleveland “Inspired Art” charity auction. America SCORES is a program that involves soccer, writing workshops, and community service projects for elementary school children in urban (and economically-disadvantaged) areas to improve their academics, physical fitness, and teamwork skills and feel empowered to lead their communities. You can learn more about America SCORES Cleveland here.

For the Inspired Art fundraiser, artists select a poem written by the students and use it as inspiration to create a piece of art. I chose the poem “Pollution” by the Mound Stem School CORE Boys team.

I was inspired by the parts where it talks about trash on the ground and in the ocean. I thought about all the trash I see everywhere around the neighborhood. So, I collected a bunch of trash that I found while walking my dog and used it as material to create a piece of art.

I chose a lion as the subject because I felt that it fit the edgy and defiant feel to the poem.

In “Discarded,” I combined my normal torn paper collage with pieces of plastic bottles, plastic bags, USB cables, rope, ribbon, bus passes, and even part of a Starbucks travel mug! However, I wanted the trash to blend in rather than being the emphasis, much like how I use catalogs in my regular torn paper collages. I wanted the piece primarily to look like “art,” rather than an assemblage of trash.

Because it uses a variety of materials, I created it on a gessoed wooden panel instead of my normal paper substrate. I also varnished most of the piece using Winsor & Newton Acrylic Satin Varnish to help protect them from dust and moisture. I left the plastic bag ‘mane’ unvarnished since all my tests turned out poorly! I had wanted to varnish that part as well, but I tried several different methods and varnishes and the fringes tended to clump and mat together and generally just didn’t look good.

I think “Discarded” turned out great and it was a lot of fun to take things in a slightly different direction. I’m considering expanding it into a series of pieces that are created with trash. What do you think? What animals would work well with this technique?

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