Artist Statement: Superfund, Rhode Island
“Emma ti piace l'odore di uovo marcio!”
“No Giorgio you smell like rotten eggs!” shrieked Emma flinging herself over the top of the bus seat in her older brother’s direction. As I narrowly caught Emma by her ankles Ezio, our director, cleared his throat over the loud speaker. “Giorgio! Emma! Up in the front of the bus with your mother please… and sorry about the smell guys Naples is having a bit of a trash problem”. Burying my nose in my sweater, I looked outside of the bus window. It looked as though we were navigating through a dumpster. Piles of trash reaching four and five feet high were cramming the already narrow streets. “How can they let this happen?”, I naively wondered. Many of the questions I had about that day were answered almost one year after watching the Martin Scorsese film, Gomorrah. The film was based on Roberto’s Saviano’s controversial book about the Neapolitan mafia family, the Camorra. Unlike many other glorified mafia families the Camorra focus much of their moneymaking efforts on toxic waste dumping created by the international textiles industry.
After watching the film with several friends that were also on the bus in Naples, the conversation quickly turned to joking about the backwards Italian government and how some were thankful to be back in the United States. What perhaps they did not know was that less than twenty miles away was Davis Liquid Waste, a Superfund site in Smithfield, Rhode Island that dumped everything from pesticides to acid in unlined lagoons and seepage pits for over a decade. Though this happened almost 30 years ago, the contamination continued to affect the water supply of nearly 4,700 residents living within a mile from the site years after the site was closed.
I am investigating the environmental politics associated with Superfund (toxic waste) sites in Rhode Island. I am interested in what happens to the land when it is used and sold and who ultimately takes responsibility for it. In this case, I am creating machine-knit paintings that create what I imagine these specific sites to look like underneath the ground. Similar to a science experiment I wanted to maintain consistencies through out the project. For example, the pieces are contained in three-inch frames referencing soil samples, Petri dishes and microscope slides. In addition, each piece is informed by a written description and data from the site.
Though I chose to knit for this body of work I approached it from a painter’s perspective. The paintings and practice of Lisa Sanditz continues to be a driving force of inspiration .The way in which she explores how the landscape and the marketplace inform one another while still maintaining accessibility to the viewer continues to influence my thought process. In Davis Liquid Waste, I wanted to convey saturation through layering and transparency. The toxic, florescent yellow seeps through the neutral brown fabric stretched on top of the surface. Holes are cut out of the support creating physical cavities allowing the knit to cast its shadows on the wall behind it. Bold colors stack and fold on top of one another until they reach the top of the canvas. Grey blocks reference a cityscape as they stack precariously on top of the frame. Similar to Davis Liquid Waste, Davis Landfill’s improper storage of toxic waste caused ground and surface water contamination. In Davis Landfill, the thick layers of colorful knit overlap each other like rolls of fat. Large pink and yellow masses of pigment leak through the dark brown mesh as the paint is quickly absorbed by the unprimed surface.
Pushing, pulling, stretching, ripping. I am interested in the relationship between the knit fabric and the earth. As a whole a knitted fabric is malleable and quite strong but if stressed too much it rips and begins to unravel until it is just yarn. Between 1976 and 1979 approximately 1.5 million gallons of toxic waste were improperly dumped into Rhode Island’s Central Landfill. Though later technologies helped fix this problem this is site continues to be an active landfill and filling faster than the projected rate. In Central Landfill, the colorful, toxic knit appears pregnant. As it bulges outward, it becomes restricted in parts by a network of earth tones. The colorful knit appears acidic and manmade as it escapes through the web of subtle browns. Contemporary painter, Gabriella Salazar is another artist I often look to for inspiration. Through a combination of drawing and weaving she explores the “New York City water systems as a specific case of human intervention in, and use of, the natural environment for urban growth”. In particular Untitled, 2008, remained in the back of my mind and in retrospect informed a lot of my thinking for Central Landfill, Smithfield, RI.
The often romanticize solitary life of an artist has never appealed to me. I need to be engaged in the community to be most productive creatively. I wake up to NPR’s environmental report and often procrastinate by scanning the BBC’s website. By combining these interests visually I can discover ways in which the landscape and a community intersect, overlap and become part of one another. I find this exploration fascinating.
© Copyright Lindsay Chandler, 2009