Pamela Moulton creates a whimsical world in ‘Beneath the Forest’ at FAC Art Center

BY KARI MARTINDALE Special to The News-Post

Amid the gray winter days, the FAC Art Center has been transformed into a colorful world with the art installation “Beneath the Forest,” by environmental artist Pam Moulton.

The installation includes large-scale fiber-art pieces and found-art sculpture made of discarded materials — fishing nets, heirloom gloves, bottlecaps — that have been given new life. The result is a focus on the natural world and various communities.

“The process [Moulton] engages in, which often involves her community, is part of the work itself,” said Emily Holland, public art program manager at the Frederick Arts Council, who manages the space.

Moulton calls it “public spirit” and notes that “the hands that have gathered, unraveled, tied, woven, painted, touched and transformed these materials are truly inseparable from the objects.”

Much of Moulton’s work is constructed of discarded fishing gear, known as ghost gear, pulled from the Gulf of Maine. Moulton, who lives near the gulf, works with lobstermen and local organizations to clear the waters of this debris, which she “tames” by cleaning, deconstructing and then reassembling to create art that evokes conversations about ocean pollution.

As part of her environmental awareness mission, Moulton visits schools and explains to students that the rope in her sculptures was at the bottom of the ocean. “All of a sudden, these little second-graders become ambassadors for the ocean,” Moulton said.

“Beneath the Forest” is part of a larger body of work, “Forest,” which Moulton created during her two-month residency at Speedwell Projects in Portland, Maine. Moulton began working on the installation pre-pandemic, having received several grants to build an interactive, multi-sensory forest for elders living with dementia.

“COVID changed the direction of the project, closing possibilities for elders,” Moulton said, however, “the work continues evolving for site-specific spaces,” such as “Beneath the Forest, Beneath the Sea,” a public art installation at Payson Park in Portland, commissioned by TEMPOart. Large, fantas- tical outdoor sculptures constructed of ghost gear were shaped into trees “teased out of the Earth,” she said.

“The accessibility and joyousness of this work lends itself to a greater consciousness about the fragility of our ecosystem and inspires better futures worth imagining,” Moulton said.

Moulton facilitates Opening Minds through Art, a class where University of Southern Maine and University of New England students are partnered with elder artists living with dementia to make contemporary art.

“I just realized that as people age and they lose their motor skills … responsibilities are taken away from them, and they can’t be autonomous at all.”

Wanting to give them the autonomy to make creative decisions, Moulton thought, “I’m going to design an installation where, no matter what they do, they’re successful.”

Elements of the forest exhibited in Frederick have been created by elders, including the misshapen mittens in the FAC exhibit. Moulton asked, “What would happen to our hands if we [were to eat] all those genetically modified foods,” inspiring mittens depicting how the body might change.

“Beneath the Forest” is a multi-sensory exhibit, as its visual and tactile elements are often paired with music, movement and scent. During the FAC holiday party, Moulton performed alongside a piece that includes a windowless, doorless birdhouse covered in denim motifs, representing the difficult period of isolation early in the pandemic. Her movement was accompanied by a soundscape created by her son, Matice Maino.

Denim is found throughout Moulton’s COVID-inspired pieces. In late 2021, she participated in “Remembering Together: Marking Lives COVID-19,” hosted by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Artists had been asked to make 1,000 marks on paper, to represent 1,000 lives lost to COVID. Moulton described her contribution as little round piece of denim in piles. She chose the material because “COVID was ruthless and had no boundaries of any kind — just like denim,” she said, “which crosses generations and cultures.”

A similar piece in “Beneath the Forest,” made of denim piles shaped into emojis, depicts Moulton’s feelings throughout the pandemic. She worked with students to create the pieces.

“We explored how we felt, focusing on social-emotional learning, thus my emojis.”

Moulton finds denim material to be a perfect representation of our climate crisis, too. The average American has multiple pairs of jeans, and the industrial process is significant, she pointed out. “To make one pair of jeans uses about 1,800 gallons of water.”

From doilies to denim, needlepoint to netting, “Beneath the Forest” is comprised of modules made of lostand-found objects and ghost gear, reminding us that “we can make beautiful things out of forgotten objects,” Moulton said.

Kari Martindale is a writer and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and spoken word artist who has been published in various literary journals and anthologies and featured in events and readings across Maryland. She sits on the board of Maryland Writers’ Association, co-edits the literary magazine Pen in Hand, and holds an MA in linguistics.