Artist at Exit 0 Riverblog

The river has finally given us a reprieve from the high waters of the past month.  I  got an early start from my home in Louisville and crossed the Second Street Bridge on my way to the Falls of the Ohio.  Today, I decided to do something a little different and wandered the eastern bank of the Ohio River on the Indiana side which technically is not in the Falls of the Ohio State Park proper.  I just kept walking and walking and had no trouble filling my collecting bags with potential art materials.  Overall, it would turn out to be a good day and I managed a couple of modest projects which are the subject of this post.

I walked as far east as I could without feeling like I was wandering onto private property.  I figured if someone were to challenge me, they probably wouldn’t object to me picking up the plastic and river-polished Styrofoam that soon filled up my bags.  As it turned out, I didn’t encounter a person all day long.  It could be that hiking along a muddy riverbank isn’t most people’s cup of tea, but that’s just speculation on my part!  I did come to one spot that afforded a nice view of Louisville’s skyline.  To take these pictures, I stood in what was once a creek that originally fed into the river.  That must have been some time ago, however, because the view behind me is somewhat industrial.  Now it’s a spot where the water backs up when the river is high.  Everywhere I wandered I found lots of junk mixed into a driftwood and ground up tree bark matrix.  Here are a few of the items I found that were a bit more interesting.

Here is a picture of miniature plastic river corn poking out among the woody debris.  There’s something about finding plastic plants out here that still provokes me.  I picked this corny cluster up and into the collecting bag it went to ultimately join the other fake food items that I have assembled over the years.

And now for a toy figure that probably represents a disk jockey character complete with over sized jewelry and a microphone.  I don’t recognize this character and it occurs to me that I’m now hopelessly out of synch with cartoon popular culture.  My sense is that programs come and go so quickly now that the plastic crap these shows spawn far exceeds the actual life of the shows themselves.

Moving closer to the railroad bridge that I like to work around…I found this realistic toy lion.  I think this is an example of how you can develop “a six sense” for finding stuff, because this lion was the same color as the wood chips and debris it was mixed into.  Stuff that is neon colored like many plastic items are makes them relatively hard to miss.  Let me show you what I mean.

Here’s my latest color spectrum arrangement made from found plastic.  I gathered these components up along my walk on the riverbank just east of the park.  I found a place that was relatively sheltered by the wind that had just picked up after my arrival.  Today, I found a bit more purple than I usually come across.

Most of  the plastic items in this assemblage are bottles of various sorts.  This time, I did add a few “humorous” toy finds like the plastic frog and rubber duck wearing sun glasses.  Since I still had a few hours to devote to today’s walk…I decided to venture further west and into the park to see what changes the river had made and to make one other piece I had in mind.

After filling my bag up with plastic bottles, I then switched to collecting lost flip-flops.  In a relatively short amount of time I had picked up enough of these cheap sandals of varying sizes, colors, and designs to make something with.  Since this is spring and we certainly have had our share of rain…it stands to reason that flowers would soon follow.  I began my arrangement by taking the larger flip-flops and using them as the base.  Gradually, I worked towards the center overlaying and stacking the smaller sandals that a child would wear.  The result was something that I called a “Chrysanthemum” in my plastic-addled brain.

I did enjoy having a little bit more of the riverbank to explore than I have had this past month.  We still have lots of potential for rain and high water.  I think on my next trip out here I will explore what the high river has deposited in the western section of the park.  I wonder if my ball collection is still around or did that eventually get reclaimed by the river?  I guess I will need to wait until next weekend to find out.  For now, here is one last image from this trip out at the Falls of the Ohio.