Hutchinson Island

For you curious peeps, Hutchinson Island is an island across the Savannah River from right downtown Savannah. It is mostly uninhabited, though there is a flashy hotel. On the Southeast bank, there is at least 70 years of debris that has washed up and just sat. Really interesting objects include lightbulbs, toys, shoes, bottles, wood, styrofoam, ropes, and on and on. Some of the styrofoam has been worn so that it looks just like pumice, or other types of stones. There is a lot of stuff which seems to be almost unidentifiable as natural- or man made? There is never really anyone there except sometimes people in 4x4s "muddin'." Anyway, last winter a group of artists, known as the Happy Flaneurs, under the Hutchinson Island Sculpture Park Coalition began creating ephemereal sculptures from the flotsam and jetsom we found. There are now quite a few sculpture sites, though some have been degraded by nature or by our own cannibalistic need for certain objects to create new sculptures. Each work seems to have its own way of interacting within the environment, and we work without judging or necessarily thinking about recycling, or conservation; the sculptures instead perform formal and conceptual roles in the landscape, without rejecting the surrounding "trash," landscape, or the 4x4 drivers who are our main audience (if by chance) actually seem to appreciate them.