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ART UNDERFOOT - click for PDF
Carol Bastien's Art Explores the World of "Beautiful Junk"
Voice of America - July 24, 2021
For NYC Artist, There's No Trash, Only Treasure For Art
Carol Bastien draws artistic inspiration from the discarded items she collects on the streets of New York City.
Nina Vishneva has more from the Manhattan-based artist in this report narrated by Anna Rice.
Russian
https://www.golosameriki.com/a/art-garbage/5960177.html
This Artist Has Been Treasuring New Yorkers' Trash for Decades
By Roger Clark Manhattan
PUBLISHED 8:35 AM ET Aug. 19, 2020
NEW YORK - When you take a walk around town with Carol Bastien, you had better be prepared to make some stops. She has a habit of putting on gloves, pulling out a plastic bag, and picking up discarded items on the street.
It’s something she hasn’t done in months as a precaution against coronavirus, but she is back looking down at the sidewalk so she can make colorful collages of the items she finds in specific locations around town. She calls it “art underfoot”, and she started it five years ago when the Riverdale native and her husband moved to the Upper East Side after years in Connecticut.
"I started noticing what was on the ground and I absolutely become fixated on what's cast off in the debris on our city streets," said Bastien, who added that she doesn’t know what made her pull out a plastic bag one day and start collecting these items for art.
Bastien first thought about using these found objects when she started the art program at PS 151 on the Upper East Side. It was the late '60s and early '70s when public school budgets were being slashed because of the city's fiscal woes, and she needed to find other materials for her students.
She called it '"beautiful junk" and now she is doing something similar, but doing the collecting on her own. She has had her work on display at art shows here and in Florida and has sold her whimsical collages too.
"The biggest reaction I get from people is they look at me work and it makes them smile and it makes them happy," Bastien said.
Bastien says she will pick up just about anything, but there are exceptions. When I asked her if there is anything she refuses to pick up, she replied, “Well, I don’t even want to tell you.” So I left it at that.
Bastien has several methods of sanitizing the objects she finds, and always uses gloves. She says different areas have their own specific collections of debris, and she has made collages using items found on her travels around the country and world.
The way she sees it, she is not only making art, but doing her share to keep streets clean and recycle.