NEW YORK CITY.- Art from Detritus: Recycling with Imagination is an exhibit at the forefront of aesthetic ecology. It speaks to the ongoing problem of waste and the destruction it causes to our environment. More than 40 emerging, established and unknown artists have come together to show their environmental concerns creatively. They have transformed objects formerly considered ugly and worthless into objects of beauty with economic and cultural value, aka Art with a capital A. This is the 4th presentation of Art from Detritus: Recycling with Imagination at The Synagogue for the Arts Gallery Space, 49 White Street in Tribeca. The exhibit runs from May 17th to June 24th with a reception Thursday May 17, 6-8pm, when the public can meet the artists and the exhibit curator, Vernita Nemec.

How did these artists come to make art with discarded materials? Each has an interesting story. Judith Janus (NYC) remembers a childhood where special objects from the trash seemed artistically appealing. Not appreciated by her parents, however. May De Viney (Chelmsford MA) describes herself as a collector of things unusual, quirky and maybe a little tacky or forlorn. Emma Powell (Northampton UK) is now 5 years into a PhD investigating the use of rejectamenta by a wide range of practitioners. Carol Block (Michigan City Indiana) used to have her high school students undertake projects using industrial waste products and as a result got involved with using discards herself. Kathleen King (Chicago IL) collected from the streets of Seoul, South Korea, which proved to be quite challenging, as she had to devise ways to not draw attention to herself. Chad Pelton (Knoxville TN) likes cutting up old books and magazines and making short stories out of them. Sylvia Mendel (NYC) began recycling her hoard of old things into art in 1992 when studying at the Art Students League.

Sandra Guze (Hartford CT) spent time during childhood in the basement as her father's little handyman's helper and discovered a great allure in the dusty, ragged, rusted, and "refused' Carol Quint's (Brooklyn NY) interest in detritus began quite by accident as she saved the plastic knives, forks and spoons from take-out menus. It seemed wasteful to her to throw them in the garbage. Edward Herman's (Brooklyn NY) use of discarded objects began with a worn out Air Force shirt. He continues to use discarded clothing to make life-sized figures. Jamie Kelty (Brooklyn NY) grew up on a farm in Kansas where discarded objects offered endless possibilities for play. Now she adds broken objects and detritus to her paintings. Barbara Minsky (NYC) collected puzzles with pieces missing, small blocks, etc. and now uses them as her basic art material. Helaine Soller's (Bayside, Queens) first detritus works were paintings of everyday events and landscapes painted on fast food plastic plates whose borders frame the art, focusing on our "throw away culture." Eric Standley (Blacksburg VA) has been reading the nutritious facts on the sides of breakfast products for most of his life and makes his art from cereal boxes.

Garry Noland (Independence MO) learned from his grandmothers who used textile scraps to fashion new quilts and his father who used old scrap metal to shore up cement he was pouring, or in leaner times to sell to the scrap dealer. Elizabeth Lundberg Morisette (Greenbelt, MD) has worked with community art projects where cost was an issue, so she learned to invent projects using items easy to find and free of charge. A student weaving together bottle-caps inspired her current work. Lisa Gross (Israel), inspired by her father's and sister's sculptures from vintage fabrics and wood shards began experimenting with household discards, later moving to discarded furniture left by the wayside. Vernita Nemec (NYC), AKA Vernita N'Cognita, the curator and organizer of the Detritus exhibits is also an artist who works with recycled materials. She grew up in Painesville Ohio learning to value the "used" by watching her mother draw and make her grocery lists on used envelopes. Critic Ed McCormack calls Nemec's "Endless Junkmail Scroll an encapsulation of the philosophy of aesthetic ecology that prompted her to found the Art from Detritus movement (art made from recycled materials)."