- The original Rockport Center for the Arts was housed in a 6,000-square-foot Victorian-era building, which was severely damaged and subsequently demolished after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
- The Rockport Center for the Arts underwent a significant rebuild with the construction of a new $12.5 million, state-of-the-art facility that opened in December 2022.
In 2013 we were in Rockport where we worked with workshop participants to collect plastic and create Washed Ashore
We are thrilled to be invited to send work to the AIR Retrospective.
https://www.rockportartcenter.com/exhibitions/airretrospective
Our trip to Texas in 2013 took us to the town of Rockport, 40 minutes north of Corpus Christi. In 2012, The Rockport Art Center, with its go-getting staff, sponsored a film festival that featured the short film about us One Plastic Beach. They found the film compelling enough to invite us to their new residency program for a weeklong workshop and exhibit. Rockport, a Gulf Coast fishing village, now includes a retirement community and a weekend getaway spot for San Antonio and Houston. As they say in Rockport, "the Texans come down for the weekend." So many Texas-es.
Rockport sits on Aransas Bay, the main body of the gulf, separated by a string of barrier islands 500 miles long from Galveston to Brownsville. This is the Aransas National Wildlife refuge, a birders’ paradise with terns, roseate spoonbills, ducks galore, herons, ibis—and, the main winter home of the Whooping Crane, almost lost to the world with a population of 21. These days, there are over 430 in the wild and a lot of them live in the environs of Rockport. Tourist dollars fly south for the winter viewing—the cranes wouldn't be here were it not for some avid, environmentally savvy folks.
We were enlisted to collect local beach plastic then put together an exhibit at the Center. We know from Kehoe Beach that the plastic can on the beach can be intermittent. What if we don't find any plastic? Just in case, we brought prints of our work, but they'd make a pretty paltry show in the five rooms we had to fill. And the prints we make are fine, but we would need the real stuff to make an impact.
Well, it was all fine, if you count fine as finding boatloads of plastic. The beach at Matagorda Island was covered. With our group of 10 workshop participants, in six hours we collected 55 hard hats, 5 plastic pigs, 11 plastic trucks. But only one nurdle and one Kraft Handi-snack® cheese spreader. There was ample plastic to fill a dozen galleries.
Years ago, we arrived at the notion that the plastic presented in the most matter-of-fact way tells the story best. We've been aiming at the "oh! that was once mine" feeling. To take ownership of the problematic nature of plastic pollution. Our group really got into that feeling. Just tell it like it is. This is what there is—no need to embellish.
As a centerpiece, a group of hard hats went up on the wall in martial order. One of the most compelling finds was a trotline or a long line. A great snarl of heavy-duty monofilament with hundreds of baited hooks and empty water bottles strung along for floatation and retrieval. These deadly pieces of gear catch the top of the food chain creatures—sharks primarily. We mounted the line and hooks on the wall, washed off but just as found—a powerful sculpture with a heart-breaking message.
To simulate plastic floating in the ocean, each participant helped to attach shards, fragments, and identifiable pieces of plastic on to wires to hang from the ceiling in a squared shape curtain, making a plastic-walled room within a room.
We've often said, our best times with people are spent hard at work. We enjoy the affability that comes with a focus on a task. In the art center’s workshop room, a lively quilting bee atmosphere prevailed so it was a daily struggle to pry the folks away.
It was the energetic and creative Rockport folks that made our stay a trip to remember.
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| Row upon row of hardhats |
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| The trotline |
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| A Room Within a Room |
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| Richard doing a computer search, on a quest for the answer to “why so many piggy banks?” |
