Art we should be ashamed to see
FROM THE WETLANDS TO THE WALL
BY MARLI GUZZETTA
When you're at the beach or on the waters off the coast of Nantucket, take your

trash home with you - or else an artist might just tack it up on the wall of the Artists' Association Gallery, where everyone will shake their heads at what you've done.

That's not the official message of "From the Wetlands to the Wall" - a recycled materials art exhibit compiled by local artists to raise money for the Loring campaign - but it is a loose paraphrase.

Artist Susan Whelihan conceived of the project while walking the beach one day, struck by the amount of leftover garbage she found.

"My original concept was to try to create beautiful pieces of art from the ugly trash, but in working with other artists, I decided to do a combination of inyour face pieces and pleasing pieces," said Whelihan, who filled 10 30-gallon Rubbermaid garbage bins with garbage - including rope, balloons, plastic toys, shoes, wood, glass and other miscellaneous crap - during several beach cleanups.

To realize the project, Whelihan linked arms with the Nantucket Land Council, the Artists' Association of Nantucket, the Nantucket Arts Council (which funded the project with a grant) and Nantucket's Clean Team - a volunteer litter-pickup group organized by William Connell and Sarah Oktay; it removes garbage from Nantucket beaches every Saturday morning. Artists joined the Clean Team on their runs to amass materials for their work. Though not professional artists, some people participated out of sympathy for the issue, like biologist and basket maker Dick Vogt and his wife Gay, a lawyer.

"That's another cool aspect to this project - it can inspire people to do something different," Whelihan said.

Normally a visual artist, Julija Mostykanova wove a hat and scarf using pieces of malleable plastic.

But not everyone chose to create straight artworks meant only to please the eye.

"When Susan first proposed this, a lot of us were excited from not just the environmental point of view, but also the artistic point of view. Often, we find bits and pieces of metals, or whatnot, really choice items on the beach. So a lot of us thought 'This is a great opportunity,'" said participating artist Diane Dicker. "I went out with the Clean Team to clean up Coatue. Beforehand, I was actually told by a friend who has been living on the island for 14 years, 'Oh, you won't find much there; it's pretty clean.' We went, and it was absolutely astounding how much rubbish there was. Even the hardened Clean Team members were pretty horrified. ... We had enormous garbage bags, and three or four of us had filled those within an hour. "

Dicker and AAN member Gail Sharretts, who is also participating, decided that the piece was "80 percent thinking and 20 percent execution," according to Dicker, who is fashioning "a pristine little beach scene with a mass of rubbish in the middle."

"My initial idea of creating something lovely and whimsical went right out the window. Now, I want to create something that shows how revolting this really is. I want it to be ugly. I would like it to display a cross-section of what we've found so that every time you go to the beach, you're more aware," Dicker said. "Even the people who live on Nantucket and certainly the visitors see these wonderful spaces, which are by and large very clean, and they don't realize that it's because people like the Clean Team - volunteers - tidy them up."

Sharretts said her wall piece "kind of inspired itself."

"It's not going to sound glamorous, but it's a galvanized bucket that had a fire inside it, and people, instead of taking it with them, buried it," she said. "I was going to make an assemblage, but I realized that the inside of the bucket is so beautiful, so I opened it up for a wall piece, and I'm adding other found objects as well."

"Other found objects" could mean anything, judging by what Sharretts has found on her walks, including old tools, metal rings, handles to things, pipes, cement from old pieces of houses, old lanterns...

"You can't believe what people throw away on the Moors. I have to say that I'm truly horrified at all the things that are getting washed up and thrown into the ocean," said Sharretts, who also salvaged several old cans of spray paint and a bucket of oil paint.

She added that the project has motivated her to keep making pieces with recycled materials well beyond the exhibit's deadline.

Steve Nicolle, Property Superintendent for the Trustees of Reservations, likens Nantucket beach cleaning to cleaning one's kitchen. "It's a neverending project. ... You're not going to get rid of it all," he said.

Still, Nicolle has seen just about everything was ashore on Coatue beaches. "Kitchen sinks, toilets, tons of plastics and different containers, 55 gallon drums half-full of stuff; it's so variable. You never know what to expect," he said.

He knows that fishing paraphernalia is a byproduct of islanders making their livelihoods at sea, but also admits that fishing line - which can cause important species of fish to tangle - as well as drums of chemicals create the most problems. Even he grows dismayed at some of the things that often wash ashore.

"As more people think about the problem, maybe they'll be more likely to pick up a piece of trash when they go to the beach, or at least not leave any," Whelihan said.

I ART FROM TRASH

What: From the Wetlands to the Wall. Participating artists include: Anne Warren, Diane Dicker, Julija Mostykanova, Gail Sharretts, Susanne Green, Jane Schnitzer, Christopher Bonelli, Megan Hinton and Susan Whelihan.

When: opening and bidding Friday, Nov. 10. 5-7 p.m.; bidding continues Saturday, Nov. 11. 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.; Final auction bidding Sunday, Nov. 12, 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. Where: AAN Gallery, 19 Washington Street Cost: Free For more information, call 228-0294.