Artists turn storefront into aquarium o7 recycled 6oods
Sea life formed from bags, bottles, egg cartons for month-long exhibit
Diverse sea creatures swim amid the color ful coral. A school of shimmering silver fish delights within a kelp forest. An octopus looms large, not far from a clam with vibrant blue lips.
But beneath the delights of the Four th Street Aquarium is a serious statement.
Look closely, and you’ll see the coral reef is made from about 2,000 plastic bags. Rubber gloves, egg cartons and crocheted newspaper bags take the form of other vegetation. Fish come to life from Hello Fresh packaging and chip bags. Styrofoam and milk jugs form a large tur tle.
The kelp forest is actually plastic bags, some fused together, and plastic strapping from lumber.
What looks like a peacock mantis shrimp at first glance is actually ear buds, water bottles and zip ties.
Loveland artists Heather Fortin Rubald and Kathryn Vinson, with help from community members who donated their recyclables, have created an under water world out of post-consumer waste in an empty storefront on West Fourth Street.
They hope the art project — on display through April 17 — will delight people, but also make them think.
They want people to think about the thousands of bags and water bottles, the packaging that routinely ends up in either landfills or the recycling stream. They aspire to inspire people to think about packaging before they shop, to not use that disposable straw, to leverage their consumer dollars to bring about change.
“If we create something beautiful, it draws in you in,” said Fortin Rubald. “They look at it and say, ‘Oh trash. That’s a lot of trash.’ If you give them something beautiful, they stay long enough to start thinking of what they can do.”
With a community grant from the Loveland Visual Arts Commission, the artists have been working on the Four th Street Aquarium Project for months. They have collected recyclables from community members, including more than 2,000 water bottles gathered by the Loveland High School Honor Society.
The students also helped them create strings of bubbles with the bottles for the display.
With a grant and plenty of donated bottles, bags and packaging, Fortin Rubald, an artist who creates different items from recyclables, and Vinson, a stone carver, opened their creativity and went to town. For the past week, they have been installing the sea life inside the building at 126 W. Four th St., next to Loveland Aleworks, where it will remain for a month for all to see through the large storefront windows.
The lights kicked on at 7 p.m. on Saturday — an art exhibit that people can see as they pass by, or make a special trip to view, from outside.
They also plan to host a day of tours and some sort of Earth Day event; details of both will be posted on the Fourth Street Aquarium Facebook page once confirmed.
While Fortin Rubald has turned waste products into art for the past decade, this foray under the sea was new for Vinson, whose art typically takes on another form.
“I’m a stone carver,” she said. “This is a different experience for me. People bring you their trash, they really want to help. People want a solution, and this is one solution. It’s a bigger problem than anybody knows what to do with.”
The artists hope their work will create pause for people to find ways to reuse things, to reduce their waste, to buy products with less packaging and made from recycled goods. They also hope it will create some of the joy they found in making the aquarium, as well as smiles.