Plastic bags are no friends to the environment, usually ending up blowing across parking lots, moldering in landfills or choking wildlife, but Cambridgeport artist Michelle Lougee’s transforms them into nature itself – first turning the bags into material that can be knit, then crocheting it into surprisingly lifelike (if larger than life) organic forms.
All sorts of aquatic and microscopic life is suggested in Lougee’s work, which gets a showing from today through Dec. 5 at the Boston Sculptors Gallery in the Sowa District, where Lougee and Nora Valdez share a First Friday reception at 5 p.m. Dec. 6.
“My sculpture and other works focus on the delicate balance between nature versus human society and technology. The duality of this relationship is explored in both materials and subject matter,” Lougee says. “The combination of the two factions produce mysterious yet familiar forms.”
The work explores the intersection of art and science and the interconnectedness and pattern in nature, according to the Art Guide listing of the Boston Sculptors Gallery show.
“I strive to replicate the animated quality that all living things possess. That is what makes nature beautiful,” Lougee says. “My job as an environmental artist is to capture that beauty in my work while instilling a message into it.”
The gallery is at 486 Harrison Ave., Boston. It is open from noon to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays.
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Knit or crochet? Without being able to see the actual object, I’d guess this is crocheted, and the other objects on her website, to the extent I can see much detail, look crocheted. Yes, knitting and crocheting can use the same materials, but I can’t spend four days a year at without being persnickety about these distinctions.
Apparently, my attempts at html didn’t work. Where I spend four days a year is <a href="http://www.knittinguniverse.com/East" "Stitches East" .