Artist Cynthia Minet led a tour through the museum to talk about the inspiration and the process of her work featured in Gyre: The Plastic Ocean and her focus installation Cynthia Minet: Beast of Burden. She describes how she found discarded objects on the side of the road, some found by friends, constructing framework and sometimes naming the animals.
In a work created specifically for the Gyre exhibition, Pack Dogs, five huskies pull a sled. Made of recycled and discarded plastic and lit by LEDs from within, the varying colors reference the Aurora Borealis under which the actual animals would run in Alaska. In the process of making them, Cynthia’s daughter playfully nicknamed each dog. The “pack” is led by “Molly,” followed by “Stan,” “Jenny,” “George,” and “Sunny.” In Beast of Burden, the life-size baby Asian elephant is named “Gladys.”
Cynthia’s sculptures, all made of post-consumer plastic, are part of a series called Unsustainable Creatures highlighting the burden that our society puts on the natural environment, and on domesticated animals we use as surrogates to accomplish chores.
Cynthia Minet: Beast of Burden will be on view at the USC Fisher Museum of Art through October 10 and Gyre: The Plastic Ocean through November 21.
