Plastic art to grace Huntington Center
Written by Betsy Woodruff | | bwoodruff@toledofreepress.comThis August, a new piece of art will grace the Huntington Center, and it will be made of trash. The work, a bird’s-eye-view sculpture of the Maumee River, will be made from hundreds of post-consumer blue, green and purple plastic items.
Standing in front of the sculpture outline are team members Greg Mueller, Sayaka Ganz, Steve Williams and intern Kevin Banek.
A trio of BGSU alumni, called the GMW Public Art Team, is working on the project. The artists, Sayaka Ganz, Greg Mueller and Steve Williams, are building the sculpture piece-by-piece in the Imagination Station, according to Sara Stacy, the group’s public relations counsel.
Mueller said the group wants people from the area to bring plastic items, including old toys, kitchen utensils, tools, baseball helmets and broken chunks of plastic, to a collection bin at the Imagination Station for them to use to make the sculpture.
“Anytime they go to the arena, they’ll see their piece as part of the whole,” he said.
Right now, the group is working on building a mesh frame on which to affix the plastic. Once the frame is finished, around July 1, people will be able to attach the pieces of plastic that they bring, participating in the project.
“The idea is to have a green project that depicts this amazing piece of nature that we have available to us in the Toledo area,” Stacy said.
Ganz said the sculpture will be about 55 feet long. It will have LED lights behind it that will create a stained glass-effect on some parts of the sculpture.
The project is coordinated by the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo. Funding is from the Lucas County Commissioners and private donors, according to Mueller.
People can drop off plastics at the Imagination Station on Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. The artists will be working on the sculpture Thursdays to Saturdays at 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through July 31.
Tags: Huntington Center
