Hi I'm Maria Simonelli, the creator of Project Reclaim.
In what I affectionately describes as my 'slash' career, I'm a Melbourne-based educator / sustainability advocate / community facilitator / artist / author and start-up entrepreneur.
I’m someone who has managed to do a number of different things in their career and now I happily play at the intersection of creativity and sustainability.
I’ve been ‘doing art’ since I can remember, always making things. My mama was a seamstress and papa was always growing things- animals, veggies, the house... So I guess it made sense that I would end up being a maker.
I began my professional life in the sciences, with a focus on environmental studies, which lead to many years working across the sectors to build awareness and capacity in sustainable practices. While I continue to communicate on, and address, the declining health of our environment, its relevance has entered a new phase of deeper expression and narrative through my art practice.
My preferred medium is sculpture and my recent works have deliberately utilised neglected and discarded materials, and exploited their uniqueness to create intimate and soft sculptures. In an ongoing attempt to reduce waste in my own art practice and incorporate sustainable principles, I'm now exploring how other's waste can become my raw material.
The Project Reclaim: organic sculptures series, aims to provide a more subtle environmental message about reuse, combining the use of rarely used materials like crochets or remnant fabric with fallen tree branches and empty seed pods that would otherwise be discarded. They also include remnant fabrics including odd small pieces, ‘out of fashion’ clothes and old crochets that would all have eventually gone into the waste stream.
Over the past few years I've also integrated my passion for renewable technology into the pieces by using solar powered and energy efficient LED lighting.
The pieces aim to provoke another form of discourse on the use of discarded materials in art by using materials that are often not perceived as waste because they are not obvious or picked up in the daily waste stream. But a growing percentage of the waste stream is made up of items that are in ‘good working order’ but are seen to have passed their use by date, not fashionable or just not the latest trend. This form of waste is contributing to our footprint and the demands we are making on the environment.
I hope that people really connect with Project Reclaim and would want to keep and nurture the pieces.
I’m more and more creating art pieces to address my own concerns about environmental and sustainability issues. I have found that art can inform and educate people in many ways about particular difficulties in our relationship with nature. I believe art, through all its creative expressions, can act as a powerful facilitator for social change.
Although this art is quite passive it still has the ability to connect with people on an emotional and subliminal level. I hope to heighten their appreciation for our local environment and become more conscious of the resources we use and question where all our stuff ends up.
Thank you for visiting the website.
I have a blog you may also be interested in at: www.mariasimonelli.com.au/blog.html
In what I affectionately describes as my 'slash' career, I'm a Melbourne-based educator / sustainability advocate / community facilitator / artist / author and start-up entrepreneur.
I’m someone who has managed to do a number of different things in their career and now I happily play at the intersection of creativity and sustainability.
I’ve been ‘doing art’ since I can remember, always making things. My mama was a seamstress and papa was always growing things- animals, veggies, the house... So I guess it made sense that I would end up being a maker.
I began my professional life in the sciences, with a focus on environmental studies, which lead to many years working across the sectors to build awareness and capacity in sustainable practices. While I continue to communicate on, and address, the declining health of our environment, its relevance has entered a new phase of deeper expression and narrative through my art practice.
My preferred medium is sculpture and my recent works have deliberately utilised neglected and discarded materials, and exploited their uniqueness to create intimate and soft sculptures. In an ongoing attempt to reduce waste in my own art practice and incorporate sustainable principles, I'm now exploring how other's waste can become my raw material.
The Project Reclaim: organic sculptures series, aims to provide a more subtle environmental message about reuse, combining the use of rarely used materials like crochets or remnant fabric with fallen tree branches and empty seed pods that would otherwise be discarded. They also include remnant fabrics including odd small pieces, ‘out of fashion’ clothes and old crochets that would all have eventually gone into the waste stream.
Over the past few years I've also integrated my passion for renewable technology into the pieces by using solar powered and energy efficient LED lighting.
The pieces aim to provoke another form of discourse on the use of discarded materials in art by using materials that are often not perceived as waste because they are not obvious or picked up in the daily waste stream. But a growing percentage of the waste stream is made up of items that are in ‘good working order’ but are seen to have passed their use by date, not fashionable or just not the latest trend. This form of waste is contributing to our footprint and the demands we are making on the environment.
I hope that people really connect with Project Reclaim and would want to keep and nurture the pieces.
I’m more and more creating art pieces to address my own concerns about environmental and sustainability issues. I have found that art can inform and educate people in many ways about particular difficulties in our relationship with nature. I believe art, through all its creative expressions, can act as a powerful facilitator for social change.
Although this art is quite passive it still has the ability to connect with people on an emotional and subliminal level. I hope to heighten their appreciation for our local environment and become more conscious of the resources we use and question where all our stuff ends up.
Thank you for visiting the website.
I have a blog you may also be interested in at: www.mariasimonelli.com.au/blog.html
