Artist talk with Alexis Oltmer

Alexis will discuss her exhibition,

FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS: A PLASTIC POLLUTION STUDY OF LAKE ERIE

For Future Generations began in December 2016 after Oltmer visited Emerald Beach located at 329 Erie Street, Buffalo NY to photograph and enjoy the waterside. If you’ve never been, Emerald beach is a beautiful spot & sits at the mouth of the Buffalo Niagara river. Unfortunately the location lends itself to be a prime location for plastic pollution and trash debris to wash ashore. As an artist and citizen scientist, Oltmer cleaned and documented the beach to create a body of work while also supplying the data collected to the Alliance for the Great lakes. Each day she cleaned the beach from the rocky area to the sand (about .4 miles) documenting and collecting the plastic pollution she encountered. Her creative mandates at each clean up included the following:

• Leave all organic matter on the beach
• Photograph the plastic pollution centered in frame – dead pan
• Collect a bag of the oddest most eye catching pieces of plastic pollution
• Photograph a side profile of the beach and a final trash collected shot.