Renowned Upcycler Willie Cole To Lead Sustainable Sculpture Building at Newark Academy

Cole’s visit kicked off a six week artist-in-residency at Newark Academy in which he will guide students through the creation of a piece of sustainable art. Throughout this residency, Cole will instruct students on how to create one of his signature water bottle chandeliers — made entirely from 4,000 16 oz recycled plastic water bottles.

“It’s important for my generation to pass knowledge down to the next generation, whether it be about recycling or anything else, because that knowledge will be more important in their world than it is in mine,” Cole says. “[These students] are going to be living in the consequences of not being aware of environmental issues.”

In order to pass down that knowledge, Cole likes to engage with students in these types of projects in order to provide them with an opportunity to visualize what mass amounts of waste actually looks like — in this case, 4,000 water bottles. Cole notes that when students can visualize the amount of waste that just the NA small community generates, they can begin to understand the mass amounts of waste that is generated worldwide and be inspired to take action.

Cole’s artist-in-residency engages the entire school in this sustainable initiative as all community members came together to collect the 4,000 water bottles. Middle School students gathered to wash them out and Upper School art students will build the chandelier.

“Usually after these kinds of projects, students cannot stop recycling!” he says.

The completed water bottle chandelier will go on display in Newark Academy’s David Teiger ’47 Gallery for Studio Arts on Wednesday, November 6 alongside a body of Cole’s sustainable artwork which will be exhibited through Monday, December 2.

An opening reception for the exhibit will take place on Thursday, November 7 from 2:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. and is open to the public. If you are interested in visiting the exhibit, please contact Gallery Director Elaine Brodie at ebrodie@newarka.edu.