Sinikka Nogelo
Thinking back to 2013 just makes me smile. I was so proud of our group exhibit “Cape Ann Artisans at 30” at the Cape Ann Museum, so happy to be a part of it and to show my favorite painting.
Another 2013 highlight was the opportunity to do an installation at the White Ellery House. Having a chance to take over an historic space for a theme you create is liberating, challenging and fun! I chose, for the first time, to focus on the art I’d begun to make from recyclables and found objects. I’d recently made a wall piece for a benefit auction using a tin ceiling tile left from the restoration of Gloucester City Hall, and I was using weathered tin cans picked up on our beaches to make pieces of environmental art. These activities reminded me of the Finnish tradition of melting tin on New Year’s Eve. And since there’s a large population of Scandinavian heritage on Cape Ann, I decided to include samples of such holiday tin castings with the new art I was doing. I called the special installation “Tin – Relics and Remakes“. I even tried my hand at sculpture with a tin drum animal for the yard. Upstairs, I hung environmental paintings I’d done through the years with motifs ranging from holes in the ozone layer, to litter and oil spills.
During this Spring’s Cape Ann Artisans Studio Tour I’ll have many works from the tin show in my studio. And I’ll be continuing my “Kitchen Egg” series which consists of colorful, plastic, wall pieces that remind us to not allow plastic trash into our oceans. I have a wall-sized piece in mind and welcome visitors to contribute to it by bringing in a recyclable or found object that is small enough to fit into an egg carton.
Of course, there’ll be paintings, too!
