>> Wendy Tremayne lives in Truth or Consequences, N.M., where she is renovating an RV park into a 100% reuse off-grid B&B called Green Acre. One of her projects, Swap-O-Rama-Rama, is a community clothing swap and series of DIY workshops designed to offer people an alternative to consumerism. Check out gaiatreehouse.com and swaporamarama.org.
Imet artists Blanka Amezkua and Lina Puerta as a pair, as friends. First I observed their similarities: courageous use of materials, explosive color, and an unbounded approach to making things. Later I was able to see their distinct artistic voices. But I was particularly drawn to their similarities and wondered what spawned the vibrancy they have in common. First I noticed the obvious: cultural histories, art made for public spaces, and teaching. A deeper look revealed their mutual understanding of reciprocity in which creativity is borrowed, shared, and returned to its source.
Amezkua and Puerta share a migrant experience. At similar stages of life they each moved back and forth between two countries. While they both currently reside in New York, Amezkua has lived in Mexico, and Puerta in Colombia. Their lives outside the United States spawned a particular ease about reusing materials. Amezkua found a desire to create in Mexico, where there was no awareness regarding recycling and the weakening environment. “You did it because you simply had to,” she says.
But it’s not just that their materials have had a previous life. Through these artists, an object becomes embodied. Puerta refers to her materials as “immortal.” Amezkua sees hers as “imbedded with a distinctive power … It’s already been touched, handled, and caressed by many other hands. Perhaps even the environment has manipulated its intention via wind, dirt, or rain.” Her role in the object’s life is “bestowing it with new interpretation.”
By creating art for public spaces, the artists
release these newly embodied materials into the
community, where objects transform into experi-
ences. Amezkua sees this as the placing of “an idea
within a world of ideas.” By teaching their discoveries
to children, they insure that the life they set in motion will have longevity.
These two artists understand a great deal more than how to make something. What they’ve discovered is nature’s process of creativity. They know that imagination is not the property of an individual or even a generation or culture. It is not bound to a particular time — it is made by the human community, timeless and even immortal if one knows how to give it flight.
Puerta and Amezkua created Plastik Wev to demonstrate that transformation could be extended beyond materials that have been reused. They have placed Wevs in their native landscape, adorning stairwells, gates, fences, and tree trunks in New York City. Wevs set in motion a kind of play between maker and public while encouraging consideration of the all-encompassing web — the one that contains all life on Earth — asking us all to reflect on the delicate nature of our interdependence. ×
Gather plastic bags, place them on the floor or a table, and cut along their sides, removing the handles. Cut to create long rectangles.
Make long plastic strands by rolling the rectangular plastic into strips.
Create shapes by knotting and folding the strips in any pattern desired. Use pipe cleaners to fasten and make joints.
Fasten one shape to another with pipe cleaners to form the Plastik Wev. Now, place the Wev within a landscape to transform it.
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