Chaska artist Sara Lee Hanlon has found a use for at least some of the cast-off plastic detritus that drifts about our world.
"I have been known as the queen of garbage," she said. "I have the best-organized garbage you will ever find."
Hanlon cuts 2-liter soda bottles into plastic sheets and runs them through an industrial paper shredder to make confetti or plastic strips, which she sprinkles on her canvas to create texture. She turns the plastic rings from six-packs of soda into rugged shorelines. She melts plastic bags down into seaweed-like forms. To adhere various plastics to her surfaces, she uses a method that she has termed "polymeric fusion," which sometimes involves sticking a piece of art in a toaster oven or doing a bit of spot work with a cigarette lighter.
The resulting three-dimensional pieces are now on display at the Burnsville Performing Arts Center gallery. The two-person exhibition with South Dakota artist Geneva Costa, titled "Interaction and Fusion," runs through Sept. 8.
Hanlon's pieces often incorporate repetition of shapes and patterns and color palettes of either green, purple and blue ("relaxation colors," she said) or red, black and silver.
Costa's series of oil paintings celebrates color and the female form and, Costa said, was heavily influenced by futurism and German expressionist painter Franz Marc.
"I am naturally attracted to bright, bold color and interesting portrayal of motion," said Costa, an art instructor in Sioux Falls.
Because she favors vivid colors and large canvases, Costa spends hours mixing paint on a giant, nearly table-sized palette before starting. "Color theory is extremely important in painting, or at least it should be," she said.
