like garbage isn't something that always existed a couple of 100 years ago, there was really almost no such thing as, as garbage. I mean, it's a contemporary invention, like the idea of a non reusable a single use container is very new.
One of the places that we often are confronted with the effects of human pollution is the beach. It's not difficult to find garbage washed up on a beach and sometimes picked over by birds. That sort of scene was inspiration for an exhibit of art. Now on display at Heartland Community College, this is random acts of knowledge. I'm your host, Steve fast. Today we're speaking with artists and Cottington, whose exhibit albatross uses old and new techniques to confront viewers with the impact we have on the natural world.
Hi, I'm Anne Coddington, and I am a professor at Eastern Illinois University and a studio artist. My work is focused around fibers and fiber sculpture, and I am currently having an exhibition at the Joe McCauley gallery in Portland Community College.
Tell us a little bit about this exhibit is called albatross. What is the reason it's called that?
So an albatross is a bird. And it's a waterbird, mostly from the Pacific, I think, although maybe they're an Atlantic and other oceans as well. But the ones that I was looking at were in the Pacific. So what happened was I saw a group of photographs from an artist named Christopher Jordan. And he was documenting the albatross of the Midway auto, which is smack dab in the middle of the Pacific photographs of the birds on the ground that have died, and some of them decomposing. And inside their bodies, you can see the plastic particles and detritus that they've ingested, they're skim feeders, so they, when they feed, they fly on the surface of the water and just open their beak and skim along. And inadvertently along with the food they're getting. They're also picking up plastics. And so when I saw these images, I found it just incredibly arresting and upsetting. So I wanted to make some work response to that, those images of his and the albatross, if you don't know anything about the bird, they're just these most wonderful creatures, they they have wingspans, you know, I think eight feet across. And they stay aloft for months at a time. And they're just amazing animals. And they, you know, to think that we are impacting them in such a direct way I found very disturbing, honestly. So, I decided to do a group of pieces called albatross that I was creating woven forms. The technique I use is called twining. And it's a off Lun, basketry technique. So it ends up being a vessel or a basket. And I decided to weave these basket forms, and inside of them to put plastic that I had consumed over, say the course of a month. And so I saved things and put them inside these woven forms to sort of kind of take responsibility of my part in the plastic waste cycle. And also, to kind of like thinking about the idea that someday, my twined forms, which are made of natural materials will eventually start decomposing and revealing within them, the plastics that they contain, just like the beautiful bodies of the birds decomposing, revealing
in the exhibit, as it is displayed at Heartland Community College's Joe McCauley gallery, there are X rays to sort of show the interiors of these pieces that you've made the woven parts with all that plastic and everything inside of it. How did you get the X rays? How did you make that?
So once I finished them, I hadn't planned on doing X rays. And but I decided that a person could just walk through the exhibit looking at these forms thinking oh, look at those interesting woven forms. And I thought that's just not direct enough for me. I wanted them to be absolutely sure what they were looking at. So I decided to X ray them at like a one to one scale, which is the way an X rays done. And so I contacted the community college in my town, parkland, and they have an x ray tech program and I asked the head of that program. If I explained my project and said Could I bring these in and, and we could x rayed them. And she said, Sure, that would be fine. And so I had previously taught there, but I think she would have done it anyway. But I had some connection with the school to begin with. But I then started taking them in as I would finish them. And then we would position them just like the body of a person or whatever on the X ray platform. And then she would shoot them. And unlike traditional X ray, nowadays, X ray is all done digitally. So it's not actually done as a, you know, it used to be you'd put your arm there, and there'd be a piece of film under it. And it was like an exact one to one ratio of your arm onto the film. But now it's a digital process. So that then I just decided I would go ahead and print them out, as though they were still kind of that one to one ratio to show the viewer. What was contained inside. And I also think it's kind of like, it's interesting to me to try to like figure out what you're looking at, because some of them sort of look like just a little blob, and some are pretty distinct, like a plastic fork or something. So yeah, that's how that was done. And, unfortunately, COVID hit that. And so I had a backlog and but eventually, I don't have all of them x rayed but I'm getting there, it takes a little while to get that done.
So you mentioned that you'd been collecting your own plastic waste for the project? Did you think about how easy or hard it was to just do that from whatever you are producing throughout your day to day life?
It's interesting, because other people said, Oh, you're collecting plastic I can collect but it's like, no, no, no, you are responsible for your own plastic, I have plenty of plastic that I encounter. And I also walk to my studio I my students about a mile away. So I would pick up plastic along the way, on my walk. But you know, I am super for years, like many people, I've become extremely aware of what my consumption is of things in plastic, like, you know, like many people, I take my own bags to the store, and I bring containers and buy things in bulk as best I can. And I use solid shampoo bars, you know, and trying to transition to using the least amount of plastic that I can. But even still over a month's time, you know, if you have a block of cheese that you don't buy at a special place that wraps it in paper, you have the plastic that came around that piece of cheese, and then what do you do with that? So that's the kind of thing that I collected. But it's just really astonishing, like garbage isn't something that always existed, like a couple 100 years ago, there was really almost no such thing as, as garbage. I mean, it's a contemporary invention, like the idea of a non reusable, a single use container is very new. So people are getting more and more aware of that and trying to return to some of that the original ideas of you'd bring your own bags, and they'd fill them with flour, or whatever, you know, people would do. And it's interesting, because my the technique I use basketry is really the original biodegradable container, right? So basketry is 1000s 10s of 1000s of years old. And, you know, people, Neolithic people would create some kind of container to carry things. And probably the first sort of basket like container would have been something like, like, you could imagine someone walking along seeing a bunch of berries, and they wanted to carry the berries. And they'd grab a big leaf and maybe pin it together, like fold it into a cone and pin it together with a couple of pine needles. And there you have a container that you can use to collect acorns or berries or what have you. And then gradually, they started creating things like cordage, which is wrapped vines or leaves that make rope and that predated weaving. So it's really interesting to me that I'm engaging in such an ancient process and then kind of using it to comment on the idea that, that we have all these containers that are non biodegradable.
Talk a little bit about how you chose the individual shapes for what are the containers, what are the woven pieces that you've made? Were they typically things that are kind of a traditional shape, and you decided there or did did the contents then inform the shape of the container? How did you think about how those things work together and what you were trying to say, for each individual piece?
So that's a great question. I wish I had thought about it. More like that. In a way, but like one of them, like the, I can't remember, maybe it was the fourth or fifth one, I made one that sort of looks like a bottle. But I really didn't, you know, there's been people before that have made like, a replica of a disposable thing in another material. And it seems like it's something that had been done before. So I, I was also trying to tap into the idea of something organic. So my first instinct was to make organic like forms like bodies or vessels, like the birds were, you know. So I started by making sort of thinking also, I want to contain quite a bit. So I want to, I want to have a big enough container so that I can fit a lot in there. But yeah, so I started kind of just by making organic forms. And then then as the weaving process is pretty takes quite a bit of time. So while I'm weaving, I'll jot down a drawing of another idea. And I kind of just sort of intuitively meandered through different types of forms. And that sort of how the shapes came up. So I did make one, I guess that's more directly looks like a bottle, like a two liter bottle shape, but most of them are sort of organic, kind of calling back the vessel like a bird shape. I mean, they're not bird shaped, but sort of, I don't know, I guess that's the closest I could come to an answer.
Well, you say they're not bird shaped. But there's something about a bottle and the, you know, like the breast of a bird that are kind of not that different, you know, long necks, expanding, you know, yeah, when you see the stuff in the X ray, it sort of does look like this is just all you know, in its gullet, it makes you think of that
one of them one of the shapes was sort of like a bent arm, or that's how I saw it. I think that piece is in the show. It's dark brown, and it's like arm bent up, like a human shaped arm. And, and that one. So sometimes my work is sort of figurative, sometimes it draws from nature, sometimes it's more of an abstracted just vessel form.
So how did you get interested in this as your medium as far as the weaving and actually using a pretty old form of art? Was it something that you were interested in working in that kind of weaving things before? Were you working with sculpture and then wanted to find a different way to do it? How did this become the thing that you focused on
my undergraduate degree, I began in the 1980s. And I decided to major in interior design because I thought, oh, that's something I could get a job doing. And I actually think I would have loved to be an interior designer. But anyway, different story. But one of the classes that was in our curriculum was introduction to fibres class, and with this artist named this teacher artist named Naomi Shadle. And I absolutely loved this class, and it was all these different fiber techniques. So fibers includes everything from quilting, to papermaking, to bookmaking, to basketry, to stitching to Batik, and dyeing and tie dyeing and crochet and knitting. I mean, it's just this vast sort of repository of these domestic origin art forms. So this class at University of Iowa that I was in, had a few of those just like kind of tapping into the different kinds of domestic arts that inform interiors. But I just that class did it and all of a sudden, I just wanted to be a fiber artist. So they didn't have fiber arts at U of I, University of Iowa. And so I transferred to Colorado State University and got my undergraduate degree from Tom Lundberg in the fire department. Terrific, terrific fiber artist. And then I worked for about five years in actually my undergraduate degree I focused on the printing and dyeing of fabrics. So I was doing yardage and designing yardage. And I got to after my degree, I moved to Los Angeles and worked as a textile designer for a number of years. And then when I went back to school, I decided to go back to school to become a teacher. And when I I started working more dimensionally, and then ended up at U of I, University of Illinois, in the sculpture department, which was great because sculpture, the sculpture department was they were really interested in just what do you make and what weren't worried about oh, is it craft art or they weren't, they were very much just about the land of idea. And that was related right at that point. So Oh, I didn't think oh, this is cool. This is an old weaving art form. And you know, I didn't think of it that way, it just kind of gradually worked for that. And I should say that while I was in Los Angeles, I took some classes with Carol Shaw Sutton at Cal State Long Beach. And I did some graduate work there as well. And she's the one that taught me how to do the technique that I do, which is called twining. And once I learned that, I just, it just took off, I just decided that is absolutely what I want to do. And I thought, Well, I'm just going to deep dive into this technique. And I bought this 50 pounds school is like an industrial size amount of the one of the materials that I use to weave with and it was just like, I, it was such a huge commitment, I can't believe looking back on it, it's really hard to believe I did that. But yeah, anyway, and it took me about 10 years to get through that material. But But yeah, I just fell in love with this slow, methodical, woven technique. And it's great because unlike some techniques, it has a lot of structural integrity. So it can hold itself up, it can be a form that's empty. And it doesn't have to have something in it to provide structure it provides, you know, like many baskets you have around the house, they hold their self up, just based on their structure. And, and an interesting side note is that every basket that you have, or you've ever seen, every single basket is made by human hands, it is not, it's one of the few things that has not become a mechanized process. So even the 99 cent ones, you get it, you know, Walmart to the fancier ones at your one. There's a lot of things that draw me to it. These are
made by human hands. And in this exhibit Albatross, the thing you're trying to say is that it's affected by kind of human choices, right? It's not like pollution happens without humans.
That is absolutely true. You know, I think we just all are becoming more and more cognizant of our impact on our planet. And this exhibit has really allowed me to bring that to the forefront of my work just for the fact like that we're having this conversation. Now in the past when my work didn't engage in that it was mostly concerned with aesthetics, and other conceptual, you know, ideas. But now I like, at least with this body of work, I needed to go make a statement or bring something into my work that directly commented on our place in that way cycle.
Well, and thanks so much for talking to us today about this exhibit about your process about the work itself. And we appreciate you taking the time and look forward to I believe there's going to be a reception where you'll you'll come visit us.
Yes, yes. Thank you so much, Steve, I really appreciate the time that you took to talk to me and I also want to say thanks to shahrvand Who, who organized, who contacted me and organize the exhibit on behalf of Heartland. There's a reception that October 3 this coming Tuesday. There's a workshop from 12 to three followed by a talk from 330 to four and from four to six on the third is the closing reception. So come on out.
And Connington is a fiber artist and a Professor of Art at Eastern Illinois University. She spoke with us about her exhibit Albatross, which we running at Joe McCauley gallery, on the campus of Heartland Community College through October 3 2023. If you're interested in other interviews about art, environmentalism, or other topics, subscribe to random acts of knowledge on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you heard this one. Thanks for listening
