ATTEND THE RECEPTION
Time: 7 p.m. today
Location: FedEx Global Education Center, Peacock Atrium
Info: www.bit.ly/uncmandala
Swirls and stacks of multi-colored bottle caps, Smucker’s Jelly lids and empty Altoids tins fill in squares, circles and triangles that cover the floor of the Peacock Atrium in the FedEx Global Education Center.
These random discards combine to form an eight pointed circle known as a mandala.
Environmental artist and UNC alumna Bryant Holsenbeck is coordinating this project, titled “Away and Back Again.” For the past few days, she has worked with members of the community to form the mandala.
At tonight’s opening reception, Holsenbeck along with Elizabeth Hall from Carolina for Kibera and Cynthia Shea of the sustainability office will speak about practical ways to reduce waste and human impact on the environment.
Mandalas are circular, intricately patterned symbols that represent the universe in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. They are used to aid in meditation.
While building patterns from scraps at an art project at Elon University, Holsenbeck was inspired to make mandalas when she realized students naturally made circles. She also began noticing circular patterns everywhere.
“When I saw that form, I started looking at it in nature and first I was looking at flowers and slicing an orange,” Holsenbeck said.
She discovered circular patterned art in many cultures around the world in Tibetan mandalas, as well as, Indian rangolis and Native American medicine wheels.
Holsenbeck estimates that she is using about 30,000 to 40,000 bottle caps or small objects to create the mandala. She collected the materials from four or five families.
Bottle caps have been used because they are a reminder of how much food people consume, Holsenbeck said.
She has been working with disposable materials to create art projects for more than 10 years.
Formerly a basket maker, Holsenbeck discovered that trashed items like plastic bags have tensile strength and can be valuable materials for weaving baskets.
Manager of Global Events and Exhibitions for the Global Education Center, Laura Griest, said she hopes this project helps students understand their environmental impact on the world.
“Each can lid, every detergent top represents something that was either thrown away or recycled,” Griest said.
“Seeing the magnitude of pieces represented in the artwork helps us better understand the amount of garbage we produce.”
Contact the Arts Editor at artsdesk@unc.edu.
