Chautauquans who are looking to leave a small but mighty impact on both the grounds of the Institution and on Chautauqua Lake can head over to Children’s Beach Saturday for two hours of learning, action and art.
The Bird, Tree & Garden Club, in collaboration with the Chautauqua Climate Change Initiative, will be hosting its first Microplastic Cleanup Day at 1 p.m. Saturday at Children’s Beach. The cleanup day will feature a “micro-lesson on microplastics” and a workshop with Nicole Chochrek, a Buffalo-based interdisciplinary artist and founder of Broken Plastics, which she describes as “an arts- and education-based initiative to try to diversify ways that we can understand the impact of plastic pollution.”
Chochrek’s background is in environmental science, having earned her bachelor’s degree in the field from the University of North Texas in 2015. The idea for Broken Plastics emerged while she was on sabbatical with a mentor in Portugal.
“As an environmental scientist, I already knew the impact of plastic, being a byproduct of oil and gas, and when I’d go to the beach, I would just mindfully pick up the pieces around my towel, and then I found this little golden chess piece,” she said. “Then I started collecting at more of a significant rate, and then realized, in a place where I didn’t really have the financial capacity to buy art supplies or the space to have my own studio, this was a very free, abundant, and accessible resource that I could use as an artist. … It started this kind of chain of conversations with myself and questions that I was asking that really led to me understanding the real impact this is having globally.”
Chochrek observed that much of the scientific research about plastic pollution wasn’t being adequately communicated to the general public, and that the often-inaccessible language and technical jargon of the research made it much more difficult to understand. She realized that she could use art as a way to make the science behind plastic pollution more understandable, and to more directly communicate just how urgent the issue has become.
Clearing up communication about science is also important to Chochrek because of her own personal experience with dyslexia.
“Writing as the dominant form of communication has never been compatible with how I work,” she said, adding that she wanted to make sure she kept people’s diverse needs at the center of her work.
At the workshop she’ll be leading Saturday, Chautauquans can expect to learn a bit about the science behind microplastics and the dangers they pose to the environment, before moving into a crash course on spotting, identifying and removing them from the environment. Chochrek hopes that Chautauquans will leave the microplastic cleanup with a newfound curiosity about the environment, as well as a deeper desire to protect it.
“I hope the conversations that we facilitate, the trash (and) the plastic that we’re able to remove from the environment, will continue to grow, in the sense that everything collected will transform into artwork,” she said. “But then also, I hope we’re transforming each other in the process, and it will have a ripple effect that will continue — a mindfulness that will be engaged and shared.”
