Katherine Concannon's "What We Left Behind"

Artist Statement

I attended a 2019 Climate Walk that travelled Vermont to bring awareness to environmental justice. I observed the litter that we encountered while traversing highway shoulders. Plastic bags fluttered like prayer flags alongside mosaics of beer cans embedded in the dirt. However, life also flourished in this strip of borderlands between technology and wilderness. Released from tree cover, seedlings reached for the sun, and thousands of salamanders dashed the asphalt to breed in downhill vernal pools.

My experience during the Climate Walk informed my artistic process for this piece. I explored the play between Vermont’s natural beauty and the refuse of human life – particularly single-use plastics, a massive source of demand for petroleum which is extracted from the Earth at the cost of atmospheric quality. The sculpture is constructed from layers, each representing a category of objects left behind by humans. This includes paintings based on imagery from Medieval illuminated manuscripts, World War II photographs, and remnants of past luxuries like cigarette butts and perfume bottles. I tried to capture the tension between objects sculpted by people versus by evolution, weaving bone, claws, and hair into the sculpture alongside plastic packaging.

This piece is a shrine to the toxins and delights of a world on fire, and a call to action to other Vermonters to reconceptualize how we see everyday material objects, becoming more aware of the environmental destruction caused by their creation, and the lives that they will live after they have been discarded from our use.

Materials Used

Bone, plastic, hair, glass, paper, cork, gold, shell, aluminum, ink, wool, iron, paper, acrylic on wood