WICKED MONSTROUS DIALOGUES: Part lll
Thursday, March 19 Timebuddy
United States: 10am HDT, Noon PDT, 1 MDT, 2pm CST, 3pm EDT
Europe: 19:00 GMT, 20:00 CET, Australia: Friday, March 20, 6:00am AEDT
Christy Rupp
Pamela Longobardi
Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang
This winter/spring we are exploring through a series of dialogues, works that our members are making today that engage plastics as a material for reuse, research, and aesthetic inquiry. Artists invited are included in the upcoming ecoartspace book titled Wicked Monstrous, that will launch fall 2026.
This month we will hear from Christy Rupp, who will discuss her work made with single use plastic debris reconstructing planktonic forms, and Pamela Longobardi who will present her ongoing work with the Drifter's Project, which has removed tens of thousands of pounds of waste materials from the natural environment. And Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang, who will share their collaborative practice One Beach Plastic, which they began in 1999.
Each presenter will have approximately 15 minutes to discuss their work, then Q&A with audience participation following.
Member presenters:
Christy Rupp is a conceptual artist and citizen scientist, who grew up in Buffalo, New York during the 60's as the city was coping with the crumbling infrastructure of the rust belt, and the declared "death" of Lake Erie. Witnessing this as a teenager gave her an awareness that the language used to define ecocide is highly subjective. Rupp moved to New York City as it faced bankruptcy and offered fertile ground for a generation of artists lucky enough to participate in the petri dish of history, culture and nature that was the late 70’s burgeoning East Village art scene. A lifelong interest in the waste stream and its impact on habitat has since defined her artwork. Recent solo exhibitions include Fairfield University Museum in Connecticut, Anderson Gallery at University of Buffalo, and Interventions at Buffalo Museum of Science, as well as Noisy Autumn, a monograph published by Simon and Schuster in 2021. christyrupp.com
Pamela Longobardi's parents, an ocean lifeguard and Delaware’s female diving champion, connected her from an early age to water life. After discovering mountains of plastic on remote Hawai’ian shores in 2006, she founded the Drifters Project, centralizing the artist as culture worker/activist/researcher. Now a global collaborative entity, Drifters Project has removed tens of thousands of pounds of material from the natural environment and re-situated it as social sculpture. Her multidisciplinary studio-based and collaborative social practice ranges from paintings, collage, photography, large-scale sculpture, installation, public actions, and performance. Winner of the prestigious Hudgens Prize, Longobardi was featured in National Geographic, SIERRA magazine, Weather Channel, multiple films and in exhibitions around the world. As Oceanic Society’s Artist-In-Nature and Naturalist she co-leads expeditions to remote locations around the world. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is Regent’s Professor at Georgia State University. A 15+ year survey of her work ‘Ocean Gleaning’ was shown at the Baker Museum in Naples, Florida in 2022 with a book published by Fall Line Press. pamlongobardi.com
Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang have collaborated as a team since 1999, when they began their project One Beach Plastic while visiting Kehoe Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore, Northern California. They have rambled 1000 meters of tideline on this one beach hundreds of times to gather plastic that is washing out of the Pacific Ocean. From this one beach, they have collected over two tons of material. By carefully "curating" the bits of plastic, they fashion works of art that matter-of-factly show, with minimal artifice, the material as it is. Their beach plastic artworks have been featured in over 70 exhibitions in galleries and museums, educational and science centers, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Artist Windows, United Nations World Environment Day, Cummings Gallery at Stanford University, University of San Francisco, California Academy of Sciences, Sausalito's Marine Mammal Center, and Hong Kong's Ocean Film Festival. The Lang's work was recently exhibited in San Francisco at Lands End, at the former Cliff House and at the Randall Museum, and they have a permanent display at the natural sciences area of the Oakland Museum of California. www.beachplastic.com
This event is free for members + one guest. $5 for non-members. All participants MUST REGISTER.
