Vernita Nemec

  • The endless Junkmail Scroll seen at Gallery 128 on the Lower Eastside, NYC

Since the late 70’s I have been creating collage & installations, like “The Endless Junkmail Scroll”, a 200 foot collage shown in its entirety or in segments- a creative solution to too much junkmail – & other artworks from materials that would have otherwise been discarded & aided in destroying our environment. I cannot bear to throw anything away and am engaged in a lifelong commitment to making the valueless priceless.
And now in 2017 – plastic is the evil culprit destroying our oceans, sealife and future. So I am creating a body of work I call Plasticism- This series of work using discarded plastic packaging encompasses words that at first glance seem indecipherable, like worn messages in a bottle from the oceans – oceans under threat from discarded and dumped plastic. Recycling codes appear in one piece, crossed out for plastics that don’t recycle well. My mother started me reusing and recycling. She washed used tin foil and baggies for economic reasons. She wrote grocery lists on envelopes, drawing on them too, which I memorialize in a submitted work, as an environmental and personal statement.
In 1994, I founded “Art from Detritus”, group exhibitions of art made from recycled materials shown throughout the country. Past exhibits have been funded by the Kauffman & Puffin Foundations and sponsored by the NRC (National Recycling Coalition). Though artists have been recycling found objects for centuries, it’s now a hot issue identified with environmental conservation. The Detritus shows were among the first! Ed McCormack in Gallery & Studio wrote, “Art from Detritus: Recycling with Imagination is an exhibit at the forefront of aesthetic ecology.”
(See Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernita_Nemec).
I am looking for exhibition sites for both my work and for Detritus shows. My projects have been funded by the Jerome Foundation, Kauffman Foundation, The Puffin Foundation, to name just a few.

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  • Artist Info

    • New York, NY
      US - East
    • 6097312140

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