Sculptures of Animals on the Brink, Life-sized & Upcycled

by Emily Gertz

Published April 26, 2009 @ 11:44AM PT

 

 

If you're not grabbed by good art, wild animals, or upcycled erstwhile garbage, then by all means do not go out of your way to see "Don't Throw Them Away." 

Since I'm enamored of all of the above, I felt lucky to catch this little show totally by chance.  If you're in NYC today, swing by Chelsea Market, 9th Ave. between 15 and 16 streets, to enjoy it before it closes late this afternoon.

Art about wildlife is often long on sentiment and short on accomplishment.  But "Don't Throw Them Away"is a cut above.  The artists have applied aesthetic and material skills, in addition to what I'd call a real affection, to creating life-size sculptures of endangered species whose survival is threatened by human impacts 00 including global warming -- to their habitats.  The extra-special Earth Week hook is that they're made using materials that normally would be bound for the landfill. 

So, something of a manatee's natural bulk and glistening skin is conveyed by Ali Irizarry's choice to use reclaimed plastic wraps for her sculpture.  It seems to gaze out at the room with a little of the manatee's legendary placidity.  

 

Laura Larocca fashions a life-size polar bear with a jaunty demeanor, its shaggy coat made of plastic grocery sacks woven through a wire mesh armature.

 Jenna Rosenberg crafts Karner Blue butterflies from brown paper bags and plastic wrap with a delicacy that suggests something of the creature's iffy prospects for survival.

Alison Solonch's wonderful green turtle seems to have swum in from a fantasy story, with a shell of buttons and ribbon that gleam wonderfully against its gunny-sack skin, to lay its eggs in a nest of iridescent compact disks.

The show was commissioned by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Bronx Zoo.

Here's the video created for the show, by Deutch New York.  As message-driven videos go, it's got everything: clearcut forests, endless traffic jams, shameful mountains of garbage -- 380 billion plastic bags, 64 tons of garbage, 43,000 cans of soda -- the Earth seen from space, and soulful close-ups of charismatic macro fauna, people recycling instead of throwing crap away.  It's a slam dunk.

After the jump, more images from the show.

West African giraffe, by Vinny Truchsess

 

Red Panda, by Irina Makarova

 

 

Black-tailed Prairie Dogs, by Sam Englander and Jane Bearid

 

 

Black Rhino by Sam Frons - a real tour de force of upcycling

 

An juvenile Green Turtle, I presume, as it's tabletop-sized -- artist uncredited

 

All images Copyright 2009 by Emily Gertz.