Red Dot Project

People always want to know where artists find their inspiration. And, these days, some people want to know how artists respond to concerns about the environment.

For Nicole McGee, both questions lead to the same spot. McGee’s art business, Plenty Underfoot, owes its very existence to the artist’s response to her environment.

“I find creativity in the excess and scraps of other people’s work and lives,” says McGee. “I let the materials themselves inspire me.  I currently work a lot with vinyl flooring samples, plastic bottles, cereal boxes, telephone wire, and brown paper bags.”

McGee works in Cleveland’s Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood. She’s one of 15 artists whose work has adorned the PNC SmartHome, an example of low-environmental-impact living that has been on display at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

The SmartHome can be toured throughout this week, and visitors will see, among other things, McGee’s flowers made out of vinyl floor covering she found at Cleveland’s ZeroLandfill, which recovers design materials and provides them for upcycling to artists and teachers. McGee’s other flowers  – shiny and brightly colored — are made of recycled 2-liter pop bottles.

“I look at the end products of what happens around me, and I think of it through a creative lens,” says McGee. “My husband likes to drink pop from 2-liters, for example.  I saved the bottles, knowing they could be reused in a creative way.  From that process of saving the leftover containers and considering them from a new angle, the bottom bottle flowers were born.  The challenge is not saving too much; we all have to throw some things away!”

McGee likes re-using materials in part because they have a story.  Yet her work itself tends not to have the patina of age, but to be cheery and bright. It’s the same energy you get from McGee herself, when she considers the importance of what she and other artists do.

“This is my art, it is what I see when I’m not trying to see anything at all,” she says. ”It’s what happens between my brain, my hands, and leftover materials of all sorts.  It’s an expression of what I care about in the world.    Art is important in the world because it’s what some people do when they’re being as true to themselves as they ever will be.  Who wouldn’t want more of that in the world?”

Nicole’s flower vases, along with works by other SmartHome artists and designers, will be part of the SmartSale from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday Oct. 9. The SmartHome sits adjacent to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in University Circle.

Photo Credit: Laura Watilo Blake