Writing on the Steel and Bottle Sculpture 2009-2010

Thoma Hall reviewed by Carrie Rehak

Debris and Alchemy: The Art of Transformation in Marta Thoma’s Green Art

by Carrie Rehak, Ph.D.

pollution is a necessary result of the inability of man to reform and transform waste —Patti Smith

Within waste lies anthropological clues to the values and habits of our culture, a gold mine to an artist who cares to probe these mysteries. —Marta Thoma.

In Tradizione Ermetica, Julius Evola describes the art of alchemy as “the conversion and change of one being into another being, one thing into another thing, weakness into strength, bodily into spiritual nature….” Similar to this description of the alchemical process, Marta Thoma’s site-specific art installations are aesthetic and conceptual representations of transformation—that is, of the transformation of lives (and, by extension, of life – both human and nonhuman) through the conversion and change of waste and space into art.

As outgrowths and evolutions of her earlier work, which also integrates found objects, Thoma creates her more recent public art from mainly industrial steel and reclaimed glass bottles, turning the ordinary into extraordinary, the uniform into the unique, and the utilitarian into sublime. Although the sculptures are stationary, they are dynamic. The varying gauges of welded steel bring to mind the expressive gestures of a freehand drawing, while the assembled hand-dyed bottles add volume, density, and luminosity, as they flow like washes of watercolor across the lines of the armature. While the fluid structures work with and complement the surrounding environments, the individual bottles look like “raindrops” or “teardrops,” or even “diamonds,” offering “clues” into “our culture’s health and demise.” The sculptures suggest cycles — of water, of industry, and of life — interconnected courses that impact everyday existence and the future of the planet.

Created from cultural waste, the reclaimed refuse evokes a sense of story, of history, while simultaneously mirroring the present condition and opening windows into the future. The sculptures, therefore, not only elevate but educate — and potentially motivate, inspiring a community’s critical and creative response and responsibility. Marta Thoma’s green art literally and figuratively participates in the task to which each of us is called: to turn trash into treasures, junk into gems, debris into diamonds. From “one being into another being, one thing into another thing, weakness into strength, bodily into spiritual nature,” items as ordinary as mass-produced bottles become objects of resplendent beauty and profound meaning.

As Thoma describes in her Reflections, “I work to vary the stroke of the line drawing with different line widths, using heavy and light steel wire to vary the gesture. By adding steel mesh with a grid, I add more line work with structure and movement. Elmer Bischoff, a Professor I studied with, emphasized the importance of the artist’s mark and making it original and expressive by varying your mark. The bottles work together to create volume and density while flowing across the ‘line drawing’ of the steel armature. Where the white of the paper shows through when painting with watercolors, sunlight and the world behind them can be seen through glass bottles.”

Thoma explains: “The glass installations suggest the cycle of water on earth and the cycle of life. By massing the glass together in a composition they come to represent a wave, a cloud, the wind, and other nature elements, while individually, the bottles themselves look like raindrops, teardrops, and diamonds, with complex, multi-layered associations.” In her statement as “Artist-In-Residence at the Sanitary Fill Company” Thoma writes, “Searching through the debris, I looked for clues that indicate our culture’s health and demise, in the same way that women search for clues in the nooks and crannies of a loved one’s body and psyche.” (10). Again, in her Reflections, Thoma describes the bottles as “seductive, glass diamonds, while at the same time they are debris; leftovers from mass production, once useful but now destined for the landfill”. She says, “The sculpture embodies contradictions about what is beautiful and what is art. It brings up questions about our culture, mass production of products, and how we are caring for the environment” (see http://www.fresnomet.org/two-tears-sculpture.html).

About the Work

by Thoma Hall

My sculpture begins as a line drawing. The final sculptural composition changes depending on how the material moves, tells its story, and exerts its opinion.

My recent steel sculptures are like line drawings made of various marks in space created by different weights of welded steel pipe and wire. Glass and plastic bottles are stitched onto this steel frame, like glass beads onto a tapestry. I learned to stitch and sew at an early age and it was a logical concept to thread bottles with steel wire. Strung onto lines, the bottles are grouped together on the sculpture, creating tone and density that flow over the steel armature like transparent watercolors over a line drawing. The difference is that you can walk around the drawing.

Transparent and tinted glass and plastic bottles are seductive like diamonds and gems. They are also mass produced functional objects, quickly discarded and considered trash destined to become landfill. The sculpture embodies questions about what is beauty, what is art, what has value, and what is trash. It brings up questions about our culture, and how we are caring for the environment.

The work is a continuation of artwork informed by surrealism, cubism, modernism, pop art, and environmental art. In 1989 I began making sculpture with “ready-mades,” everyday items such as spoons, industrial vents, fans, and flexible electrical conduit. By including such objects, I believe the work has the soul of a past life from its previous use and meaning in culture. Like in a dream, symbolic objects appear, and like a dream, the art can be the subject of varied interpretations.

In 1993 I made my first “Earth Tear,” sculpture made of 250 recycled bottles and steel. My recent work is a continuation of this exploration of bottles and steel.