Three Rivers Arts Festival

Creativity Zone: Catch of the Day

14 May 2010 by Emily Chiodo in Environment

Much of Ashley Hodder’s public art incorporates elements of nature: foliage, animals, jewel-toned skies. Maybe you’ve seen some of her murals simply going about your day in the South Side or on Mt. Washington. Or perhaps you have driven past the construction fence outside the new Penguins arena and noticed the way she repurposed old construction items as art. Maybe it was a combination of these elements and her rising prominence on the Pittsburgh art scene that helped her to become involved in this year’s Three Rivers Arts Festival.

Pittsburgh was selected by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as the North American Host City to join World Environment Day on June 5, 2010. The Festival has fully committed to its role as the anchor site in Pittsburgh by focusing elements of the programming around the celebration’s theme of “Water Matters.”

With this in mind, Hodder has led a creative effort in the concept and design of an equally educational and aesthetic installation titled “Catch of the Day,” which can be found in the Creativity Zone section of the Festival through its duration. The piece serves double duty by providing a fun children’s activity while also educating children (of all ages) about the wildlife found in our beloved rivers and the pollution that jeopardizes it.

By keeping the rivers clean and free from discarded junk and pollution, we can all have a hand in increasing the survival rates of the oft endangered native fish. “Catch of the Day” has already begun contributing to the process by repurposing discarded materials (obtained through the generous folks at Pittsburgh’s Construction Junction) and collecting recyclable items for use in the installation itself. Between 1,500 and 2,000 soda (er…pop) cans were sterilized, crushed and attached to a frame to form the scales on a silhouette of a Leaping Brook Trout, one of our riverly neighbors. The Trout sculpture will be used not only as a pure piece of artwork, but also as an eye-catching way to draw Festival patrons to participate in the installation’s activity. Bait, if you will.

Folks can “go fish” for cleverly-designed water bottles (a.k.a. native Pittsburgh fishies) which, according to the experts guiding the “Water Matters” theme, can then be categorized in three ways: doing somewhat well, slightly endangered, and downright needs immediate attention.

“What I like to communicate through my art is a respect for nature and an appreciation for it,” says Hodder. “If I can, I try to do something that reminds me of nature and to take care of the environment.”

Hodder says that the “Catch of the Day” installation was meant to “call attention to the fact that all this debris can actually be found in our rivers, because we often don’t think about it.”

But this is, after all, an Arts Festival, and so it is still important to strive to create an aesthetically-pleasing piece. Hodder and team wondered how it could be done with veritable junk?

That is the most interesting thing about the installation; we often view our rivers and our local environment from a distance and see something quite beautiful, but upon closer review we can see the junk and the pollution negatively affecting how beautiful it really is.

And so it is also with the installation. Though you’re drawn to its vibrant, engaging and artistic qualities, you’ll soon discover that it has within it those very same components that are damaging our delicate environment. It always pays to look more closely.

“Catch of the Day” will be operating each day of the Festival in the Creativity Zone at Point State Park.  June 4-13.