A SCULPTURE, made from recycled materials, owes its creation to a team to a determined team effort that will see it displayed in a museum in North West Indiana, USA.
Glenwood community members helped by collecting the recycled materials for Umcebo Design that ultimately brought The ‘Bringer of Light Sculpture’ to life. Decorated with plastic leaves containing messages of social justice, peace and the environment, the sculpture also lights up from the inside.
The piece will travel to Indiana to the South Bend Museum of Art where it will be completed in a series of workshops and exhibited for the public to view.
Robin Opperman from Umcebo Design said the idea is to encourage participation by the public in creative waste management, social justice and encourage tolerance and dialogue.
Professor Dé Bryant, director of the Social Action Project at the Indian University South Bend, came to Durban to collect the piece and to get a context for the work done so far.
Speaking to Berea Mail, Robin said the sculpture aimed to draw people in, and get people to talk to each other.
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“This man was created two years ago and it took us a further three months to work on it. We drew on the community via social media to access recycled materials and we encouraged them to drop in and join us to see what we were doing, and to write on a ‘feather’ made from a piece of milk carton, anything that was meaningful to them. It was a lot of fun,” said Robin.
Dé, who works in the psychology department at the university, said she aimed to change the way the subject is taught.
“The Social Action Project is about connecting with real people. My students are trained as psychologists to go in with a plan, so my aim is to encourage them to connect with real people, to sit and talk to people and listen to what is really important to them. We have huge problems in this world which immobilise people, including issues of housing, racism, poverty, but if we scale it down to the individual level, and show how people can make an impact as individuals, such as through recycling, this can be used as art to bring people together,” she said.
Dé said the South Bend Museum of Art was a very traditional museum, and it was momentous that they had agreed to host this artwork.
She said the sculpture will be hung by the shoulders and be illuminated, and that leaves will be scattered at its feet in the museum on which people could write further messages on topics that meant something to them.
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