Recently, I was contacted by a local newspaper editor about my current work. Pem McNerney, Living Editor, Shore Publishing, said she had seen some of my artwork at a recent gallery opening and wanted to talk to me since she was doing a news story related to ocean trash. We talked by phone, and let me tell you, it was a thrill to have the opportunity to talk about my art!
Here is an excerpt of the article, published in the August 9, 2017 edition of the Guilford Courier, a publication of Shore Publishing in Madison, CT:
Turning Trash Into Treasure
A few years ago, Marsha Borden favored high quality, organic skeins
of wool to create things like knitted hats, mittens, and scarves for her
beloved children. Then, one day, she looked at the pile of colorful
plastic bags growing in the kitchen of her Guilford home.
“I
thought, hmmmm, what can I do with these plastic bags? I really kind of
became captivated. Maybe I didn’t need to buy expensive new materials
like organic cotton to make them. Could I use stuff I already had?” says
Borden.
Since then she has used those plastic bags to make a skirt, a bustier, handbags, Christmas ornaments, an entire tea set including a tablecloth, and several other works of art that have been shown in art gallery exhibitions next to work by artists with national and international reputations. Borden, in fact, credits her obsession with transforming these plastic bags as being key to her transformation from a mom who makes mittens to a mom who makes mittens and is also an artist and budding activist.
“For the past year, I’ve been totally concentrating on plastic bag ideas. And the reason for that is that I really feel like there’s been a visceral reaction from people. It connects with people and their concerns about rampant consumerism and mass-produced items. I’m making works that are funky, interesting, unusual, colorful, and when people look at them, there’s this sideways jolt,” she says. “These are plastic grocery bags, New York Times delivery bags. They will be on our planet longer than we are. And these are being used to create something, rather than polluting our planet.”
A Creative Approach
...In the meantime, Borden is
going to continue doing her part by creating her art. She says it’s
mostly about the art, but that her work has also prompted her to think
about the political and environmental implications of the choices we
make every day.“What does it mean that we have all of these plastic bags? Billions of them! Can we appreciate the plastic bag and its creative uses, while at the same time understand how we might be contributing to the problem of how we don’t want to give up on the convenience and joy of carrying out our groceries in something we can then get rid of? Really, we have to think about how we are contributing to this problem,” she says.
She says a work she has currently hanging in the Spectrum Gallery in Essex, Ocean, was prompted in part by her concern about huge trash gyres being created in the world’s oceans, some of them in remote places far away from inhabited land.
“Every time you bring a grocery bag home from the store, you could be contributing to this in some way,” she says. “Everything is truly connected...My goal is not to clobber people over the head with this, but maybe to make them think a little more about the contributions we are making and what obligation do we have to do something about the problems, and to sit with our discomfort.”
Besides all of that, and her joy at being an artist with work hanging in prominent galleries, she says it’s “super fun” to make her work. She takes the bags, cuts them with scissors to make loops, then pulls those loops together in a chain, then makes those chains into balls.
“And then I use it like yarn,” she says. She adds that she’s only getting started. She’s also experimenting with bottle caps and discarded clothes to create some new artwork.
“You don’t have to be an artist or an emerging artist, you just have to want to create something,” she says. “Anybody can look at their trash in a different way and create something of value out of it. I’m not the first or the last to have thought of this. But it’s fun, and I like doing it, and if I can also touch a nerve to help people save the planet, then, yay!”
Here is a link to the full article, definitely worth a read:
Guilford Courier, August 9, 2017 Turning Trash Into Treasure
Thanks for reading!
Marsha
