Ohio Valley Creative Energy plans on turning Garbage into art
“It’s been done before.” Are there any words more discouraging to an aspiring young artist? So much value is placed on originality—of subjects, ideas, concepts, and techniques—that “the anxiety of influence” can be a major source of stress for art students trying to discover a style all their own. What older artists come to know is that in fact, in one way or another it’s all been done before. But this isn’t about cynicism. Artists are natural recyclers of ideas and forms, and we all belong to the same long line of like-minded makers, stretching back into the earliest moments of recorded history.
So why not just embrace the past? Later this year, Louisville-area artists might have the opportunity to create art that is literally powered by what came before. An ambitious group of artists and urban planners are planning to build an extensive artist compound in Southern Indiana that would utilize discarded garbage in the nearby Clark-Floyd Landfill to give life to their work. In a project they call Ohio Valley Creative Energy, the landfill waste would literally provide a source of energy to fuel the art studios’ heat, lighting, pottery kilns, metalworking shops, and glass-blowing facilities. Even people who consider themselves environmentally conscious can get a far-away look in their eye when confronted with the topic of landfills and pollution. But I will try to paint a clear picture of what the OVCE project is proposing to do.
If visions of Back to the Future come to mind, with Doc pouring Marty’s backwashed beer cans into the Dolorean to make it run, be aware that this is not exactly the way OVCE’s fuel process would work, but it is surprisingly close. When we pitch something into a city trash can, it eventually gets hauled off to landfills like the one thirty minutes north of Louisville near Deem Lake. As the organic materials in these massive heaps start to decompose, they get messy, leaking downward as “leachate,” a term for the often-toxic ooze that landfills can leach into the ground. As these materials decompose, the also evaporate upward as ozone-shredding greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide. Containment efforts and regulations like landfill liners and frequent groundwater testing have supposedly cut back on environmental contamination, but none of this has stopped landfills from being the third biggest producer of methane gas emissions in the country—only natural gas systems and livestock flatulence create more ozone-depleting methane each year than landfills. In 1995, the EPA reported that the 2,200-acre Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island was the source of 2% of the entire world’s methane emissions.
The interesting part is that relatively new technologies are helping to capture the methane gas emissions from some landfills, like Fresh Kills, and convert it safely into electricity and heat for nearby homes and businesses. The Clark-Floyd Landfill in Indiana, on which the Ohio Valley Creative Energy project has set its sights, receives about 800 tons of solid waste per day, and is one of only 558 landfills (out of a total of about 13,000 active and inactive landfills in the United States) participating in the conversion of methane gas to energy. With the help of the EPA’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program, the Clark-Floyd landfill has built 61 wells that burrow down into its solid waste, capturing enough methane to power 2,000 homes every year. Displacing the methane and the carbon dioxide with this process is the direct environmental equivalent to removing 25, 398 vehicles from the road, preventing 694 railcars full of coal and 15 million gallons of gasoline from being burned, or saving 28, 322 acres of forest. The Outer Loop Recycling and Disposal Facility in Louisville, run by Waste Management Inc., is another one of only a handful of landfills in the region that re-directs its harmful gases away from the sky and towards energy production.
If Ohio Valley Creative Energy can raise enough money, they will be able to follow through with their plans this year for an environmentally sustainable dream art complex next to Clark-Floyd. They have entered into a partnership with the landfill’s managers, Eco-Tech Services LLC, and once OVCE has raised at least another $20,000 toward their goal, they will be able to purchase the land and lay the pipelines that will channel some of the methane toward a seven-acre location nearby. The first studio will be outfitted with a ceramics studio and kiln; further elements like glass hot shops, classrooms, a gallery, an ampitheater, and maybe even a brewery are expected to come later, as the compound grows and becomes both financially and environmentally sustainable.
But back to the issue of originality. The art workshops of OVCE wouldn’t be the first facility in the Louisville area to use waste as an energy source, since that is currently happening at about seven landfill sites in Kentucky, including the one in Louisville on Outer Loop, and at over thirty sites in Indiana. Nor would it be the first art studio in the Louisville area to collect and utilize the public’s runoffs for fuel: Craig Kaviar is a blacksmith and metal artist in the Clifton neighborhood who powers his forge, which is open to the public for tours and classes, using great barrels of discarded vegetable oil from local restaurants. OVCE wouldn’t even be the first artist compound in the Southeast to power itself with landfill gas. There are two landfill methane-powered art centers in North Carolina whose programs combine art residencies and workshops with environmental responsibility—Jackson County Green Energy Park and EnergyXchange in the Black Mountains. These organizations served as inspiration for the original founder of OVCE, local glass artist Lori Beck, who is no longer involved with the project. But as was pointed out by one of the current OVCE board members, ceramicist Benjamin Hunter, the art studios in North Carolina only use landfill methane gas to power certain heat-generating features of their studios, while OVCE will be the first art center to be completely powered by the energy provided by a nearby pile of waste.
The fact is that this is a case where secondhand ideas, along with secondhand materials, are an important part of progressive art making. And using landfill garbage methane isn’t necessarily a long-term solution to the problem of finding clean, renewable energy, but it is a smart compromise. The plan for the OVCE art workshops is a good example of the kind of creative thinking that is going to become more necessary as the clock keeps ticking on the destruction of the world’s resources. The hope of everyone involved with this project is that it will raise awareness of the importance of energy resourcefulness, as well as introduce new cultural and economic opportunities for Southern Indiana. If the funds are raised and the goals are reached, OVCE could attract artists and interested people from around the country to rent inexpensive studio time, take part in workshops and events, or simply to witness this holistic system in action.
Fundraising efforts for OVCE are in the works, and have recently included an exhibition at the Carnegie Center in New Albany featuring art made with intensive heat, like ceramics, glass, and metal works. It reminded me that when the Fresh Kills landfill closed down ten years ago, there was an exhibit at a Snug Harbor art gallery of works that responded to the closure of the Staten Island behemoth, like brown leachate paintings of abject creatures and tiny, remote-controlled cars fueled by landfill methane. A New York Times reviewer of that show stated that although there were some interesting pieces, “it makes you want to see a good documentary film (or read a good book) about Fresh Kills,” rather than sort through a body of work that is essentially eclipsed by the sheer curiosity of its infamous subject. (The reviewer might have enjoyed last year’s documentary Waste Land, which followed the artist Vik Muniz as he waded through layers of unmentionable filth in a Brazilian dump alongside professional trash pickers.) By contrast, the work at the Carnegie Center this winter didn’t have a freak show like Fresh Kills competing for its attention, and had the power to lend intrigue to the scientific and cultural aspects of the Ohio Valley Creative Energy design plan. Visceral works by artists like Casey Hyland, Aron Conaway, Amy Pender, Brian Harper, and Craig Kaviar gave support to the idea of OVCE as an important study in the cyclicality of all things in life, from art to garbage…to art.
–Julie Leidner
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