Fault Lines
Images from the multimedia exhibition, Fault Lines: Art and the Environment at the North Carolina Museum of Art.
The labor-intensive, site-specific installations of Susie Ganch (born 1970 in Appleton, WI; lives and works in Richmond, VA) incorporate throwaway materials such as recycled jewelry, plastic bags, and disposable coffee cup lids. Her work offers a pointed commentary on the effects of human culture and consumption on the environment.
Ganch’s art exemplifies a belief in a circular economy that operates like a natural ecosystem, promoting the use of existing and finite resources sparingly and expanding recycling exponentially. The idea put forth is that if we use less, use things longer, and recycle as much as possible, we can eventually eliminate trash by not creating it.
Trained as a jeweler and metalsmith, Ganch says of her recent work, “Trading metal for plastic, a ubiquitous symbol that celebrates our worship of the present and disregard for the future, I make anti-memorials born out of eco-anxiety.”
Ganch received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. She directs the Radical Jewelry Makeover project, a collaborative effort to recycle donated jewelry into new jewelry, offering an alternative to mining and manufactured jewelry.