Museums
Seeing the Art in Plastic Straws and Other Castoffs
By KAREN JONES
Published: March 20, 2013
THE contest challenge was to create outrageous art from unconventional materials. The students in Eileen Farrelly-Moyotl’s 11th-grade fashion design class at the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan were up to it: one of them made a dress from plastic bags filled with floating fish.
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
A dress made from plastic bags filled with floating fish, designed by a student at the High School of Art and Design.
A chandelier made from hamster tubes, created by a student at Bard High School Early College in Queens.
“I thought it was the perfect contest for my class,” Ms. Farrelly-Moyotl said. “It allows for creative problem solving and encourages students not to have limits. It also lets them express their personalities.” She said the student fashioning the floating fish dress originally wanted to use live fish, but that idea was quickly abandoned in favor of the toy variety. Securing the bags so they don’t pop when the dress is worn, however, remains a concern.
The contest, the Materials Matter Amazing Art Challenge, is a project of the Ripley’s Believe or Not Odditorium in Times Square, an 18,000-square-foot attraction filled with exhibits that define the venerable brand. Though Ripley’s already organizes field trips with local schools, Michael Hirsch, president and general manager of the Odditorium, said he wanted to have a greater impact. “One of the core elements of Ripley’s is going to the depths of your imagination,” he said. “We wanted a contest that would challenge the minds of New York City art students.”
His first challenge was to convince Mario Asaro, executive vice president for the New York City Art Teachers Association/United Federation of Teachers, that Ripley’s was an appropriate partner. “I was a bit apprehensive at first,” said Mr. Asaro, who teaches at Marie Curie Middle School in Queens. “Then I visited the Odditorium and was amazed. It is quite educational and thought-provoking.”
The Odditorium intersperses bizarre favorites like shrunken heads, a two-headed stuffed goat and an 1800s vampire-killing kit with historical artifacts, including a piece of the Berlin Wall. There is also a variety of distinctive art and fashion, including micro sculptures on pinheads, a dress made from egg beaters, religious illustrations rendered from spider webs and a portrait of President Obama made from gumballs — 12,784 to be exact.
“Part of the challenge of art is to see and do things that have not been thought of before,” Mr. Asaro said. “New York City teens are smart, creative, sophisticated and unique in their own way, so Ripley’s is a good fit.”
Krystyna Printup, an art teacher at the Bushwick School for Social Justice in Brooklyn, said she strongly supported “anything art-related” in New York City and was quick to enroll her 10th-grade class in the contest. Many of her students lack even basic family and financial support systems and her class is usually their first exposure to art. “The majority have never stepped foot in a place that has art on a wall,” she said. “They come in with a preconceived notion that art is something only people with a lot of money can make — an unattainable goal.”
With freedom as its chosen theme, Mrs. Printup’s class is hard at work on projects that include sculptures of Mount Rushmore and the empowerment fist carved from soap bars, a Statue of Liberty made from bottle caps and candy wrappers and a portrait of Abraham Lincoln designed with pennies. She said, “It’s like a war zone around our school, but to give a kid an outlet, which is what this project does, you give them excitement and the ability to succeed as a goal. It is already viewed as ‘I can do that.’ ”
Jennifer Renée Caden Merdjan, an art teacher and professor at Bard High School Early College in Queens, said using unconventional materials to create art “stems from the avant-garde movement of the late 19th and early 20th century. It was a reaction to the Industrial Age. Back then an artist like Marcel Duchamp questioned what is art and what materials can be used.”
Her students study contemporary artists who use “humble or recycled materials,” and the contest seemed ideal for an environmentally friendly project. “Students are required to use one recycled item over and over to make a design that functions, as opposed to fine art,” Ms. Merdjan said. “This is not something that comes up often in an art class, where you can use recycled materials to create something unique or outrageous.”
Eagerly embracing the fun factor, her class has designed a chandelier made from hamster tubes, a hand bag sewn together with bicycle tire tubes and a dress fashioned from soda cans. One student painstakingly pieced together a dress using 1,134 plastic straws.
“She said it was important to recycle plastic and something as small as a straw is often thrown out. People don’t often think about recycling them — but they add up,” Ms. Merdjan said. “This project allowed my class to design something of their choice, using a material of their choice and raise environmental awareness at the same time.”
Submissions to the contest end in April and winners will be announced in June. The prizes include grants for art supplies, tickets to Disney World and an exhibition at Ripley’s. The opportunity for students to see their work exhibited “gives a boost to their self-confidence and self-esteem and makes them believe there may be a place for them in the arts,” Mr. Asaro said. “I always tell my students about how many careers and jobs are related to creative thinking. It’s not just about being a starving artist.”