Various States of Water are Depicted by 10,000 Plastic Six-pack Holders
in a Contemporary Installation at C.W. Post’s Hillwood Art Museum

"Janet Nolan: Water Park"
June 1-30, 2004
Opening Reception: June 3, 5 to 8 p.m.

Brookville, NY – Artist Janet Nolan has a keen interest in the vast assortment of items discarded by Americans each year, as well as the cultural significance of the trend. She collects and uses such mundane objects as umbrellas, wire coat hangers, lost gloves and plastic six-pack holders from soda and beer cans, often discarded by others, to create sculptures. In an upcoming site-specific installation at Hillwood Art Museum on the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, Nolan uses more than 10,000 plastic six-pack holders to create depictions of various states of water.

Nolan chose the material for this project based on the enormous quantity of six-pack holders that are discarded each day, and by their inherent formalist properties – circles and grids. The artist studies the physical properties of the materials she collects, seeking and identifying structure patterns that are similar to those found in nature.

For the Hillwood Art Museum exhibition, Water Park, Nolan employs the six-pack holders to create three major works, which are tailor-made for the space. The largest sculpture, Hillwood Falls, joins thousands of plastic holders in skeins which cascade down the concave, curved back wall of the gallery forming the illusion of a waterfall 15 feet high, 30 feet wide, and two feet deep.

Following the water theme, two more sculptures, also made from plastic six-pack holders connected with grommets, reference other states of water. Each two-foot "ice cube" in Melting Cubes consists of 64 plastic holders, with over a dozen cubes clustered in spotlight on the gallery floor. The third sculpture, Flurry, is comprised of more than 100 painted blue "flakes," each measuring nine inches in diameter, strung on thin coiled wire fluttering gracefully like snowflake crystals along the wall adjacent to Hillwood Falls.

Hillwood Art Museum offers an extraordinarily spacious gallery with 15 foot ceilings and a curved back wall. Phyllis Braff of The New York Times has called it "one of the Island’s most dramatic showcases for art."

Admission to Hillwood Art Museum is free and open to the public. Museum hours are Monday to Friday 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Hillwood Art Museum is located on the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, 720 Northern Blvd. (Route 25A), Brookville. The Museum has ample free parking and is handicapped accessible. For more information call (516) 299-4073 or visit www.liu.edu/museum.