Plastics for thought

We visited the Massachusetts town of Northampton one recent spring Saturday, lunched at an Irish pub, shopped at a used CD shop and emporiums of unnecessary but interesting goods and took in the “Plastic Entanglements” exhibit at the Smith College Museum of Art.

I had low expectations of the art show, given its name, but was pleasantly surprised. 

An international array of artists transformed found plastic objects into fascinating sculptures and “paintings.” 

Britisher Steve McPherson, for example, took small plastic cellphone and other dead electronic bits and shaped them into circulating gyres of color. 

Mark Dion of New York arranged plastic thingies he’d picked up near docks and beaches and placed them in liquids in jars — like human parts and animal specimens preserved for study.

Canadian Aurora Robson sculpted clear and blue disposable plastics into a pleasing mushroomy shape.

Nigerian-born Ifeoma U. Anyaeji wove discarded plastic shopping bags into a giant textured sculpture — from a distance it looked like wool, up close it looked like Walmart.

I can’t imagine how many hours went into Brazilian-born Vik Muniz’s oversize portrait of Sarah Bernhardt — it looks like a pointilistic image from a distance, but obviously is made of plastic toy parts up close.

Art serves aesthetic purposes. In this case, it serves a thoughtful and provocative purpose. 

We have an international problem with waste disposal, plastics a large part of the mess. These artists found creative ways to reuse the refuse. 

But obviously there aren’t enough artists in the world to recycle all the throwaways we generate. They need help. The easiest way is to generate less.

The day of our visit the college hosted a well-attended ecology and recycling fair for public school students and their families, to take advantage of young curiosity, to nudge thinking about the future. 

The museum exhibit continues through July 28.

Do something for Earth Day and every day.

The writer lives in Great Barrington, Mass., a town that has banned single-use plastic shopping bags, for a starter.