An indication of an artist that excels in his or her field is their drive to grow, improve upon existing accomplishments and do it, “just that much better” next time. If you add on teaching and changing someone’s world view, all the better.
Rockland, Maine artist Kim Bernard does all those things. Her creative expressions over the years are diverse — she said that they feed off each other and are ultimately connected.
But how to capture a woman of unlimited passions and projects? Let me mention a few. Bernard is not one to be restricted. If she thinks it, she makes it happen.
“One Woman’s Trash,” Bernard’s current exhibit at Nesto Gallery at Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts, was created by interacting with students at the academy — getting them excited about trash and turning it into art. She will return to the campus in early April as a visiting artist to create an environmental sculpture with Milton Academy visual arts students. What they create will be displayed in its Art and Media Center.
Bernard creates sculpture that is recycled, kinetic, interactive and public art that involves the community. She creates installations upcycled out of trash. Currently, she is focusing on transforming plastic waste into sculpture using her portable recycling machines. How do you do that?
Students, the public, whomever, collect milk jugs, juice jugs, water bottles and other plastic containers that are fed into her recycling machine where they are shredded into snow-flake-sized pieces. Pigment is then added to the mix and an extruder, “spits” it out the other end to create “waves.” For a recent installation at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, she and her students produced a piece of art to represent flowing ocean waves as a reminder that our discarded plastic often ends up as ocean trash. Plastic does not decompose, but instead breaks down into microplastics that take 450 years to disintegrate.
Bernard’s work has been exhibited extensively including at the Portland Museum of Art, Harvard University and Currier Museum of Art. She’s also been the recipient of a slew of grants. Her work always offers an educational element. She works with the students as they actively participate in the creation of the installations — from washing the bottles to cutting them into smaller pieces to be fed into the machine.