00:00
Evie Dallmann
This is Evie with WKNC. Over the summer, I met Constance Old. A shared interest in reworking waste, or consumer detritus, as she refers to it, catalyzed a connection that emphasizes the importance of craft and creativity as it relates to sustainability. I felt this was an important message for North Carolinians who stored landscapes spanning the mountains to marshes. It's my honor and pleasure to have gone to meet and interview Constance and share the inspiration she sparked in my work and process with the North Carolinian community here on WKNC.
00:30
Constance Old
My name is Constance Old. I am an artist with a graphic design background, and I work with upcycled paper and plastic and have for over 20 years. I make wall pieces out of using rug hooking, the technique of rug hooking. I use all plastic and sales receipts. Anything that would sort of qualify as consumer detritus to the craft idea. Like, okay, so you're rug hooking. That is a really old craft from colonial times. If you use contemporary materials, does that update it? I think it does. And does it give it a, you know, a slightly conceptual side to it, where you're commenting on what are the materials of today? That's where I started. Since then, I've done a bit more installation work. Most I did a project out in Joshua Tree, California, which was a billboard and a zine about single use plastic.
01:36
Constance Old
And I did an installation in New Bedford, Mass. Using 300 pounds of ocean knots that were extracted from lobster traps off of Cuddyhunk Island. And then most recently, I had a sculpture in a piece called Sight and Sound that was also lobster traps and marine debris made into different abstract shapes. The best I can hope for, or what I hope for, is a little bit of consciousness raising. One thing I really like about beach cleanups, that I would encourage people to do one, even if you're not interested in trash. And this might not appeal to everyone, but the people that beach cleanups appeal to are really like this one on Paddock's Island. It's artists, it's scientists, it's concerned citizens. Maybe leaning towards the introvert. And the social aspect of it is hard to overstate. I mean, it's really kind of great.
02:41
Constance Old
Same thing with Joshua Tree Clean Team. I mean, I met an astrophysicist from Berkeley. I met a guy who's living in Joshua Tree his whole life. I mean, another the astrophysicist took me to a metal dump in the desert where I bought. Brought back all these metal grids, like mattress, what do you call bed frames, and even a refrigerator, Freon Thing and brought those back to the studio and worked with them. So the guy was super interesting, and I never would have met him if I hadn't had an interest in collecting garbage. When I first went to Joshua Tree In 2018, I was invited to the residency at Boxo Projects because my work uses, you know, garbage essentially. And there is a Joshua Tree clean team that goes out on Highway 62 a couple times a month and collects garbage.
03:41
Constance Old
So for that residency, I took some of the garbage from the Joshua Tree cleanup that I did with them back to the studio and washed it and created an exhibition out of the material that I brought back from that cleanup. The New Bedford installation of 300 pounds of ocean knots was also the result of a cleanup. My friend at center for Cultural Studies got a grant to allow a huge group of us, about 50 of us, five of whom were artists, to go out to Cuddyhunk and gather, try to pick up all these lobster traps, and then cut all the rope out of them so that the metal could be recycled. So over the course of three days, we collected over 6,000 pounds of garbage. So the five artists each made pieces that were inspired by their experience on Cuddy Hunk.
04:35
Constance Old
Personally, I was inspired by the amount of rope. It was crazy. And by the knots. The lobster traps drop down 200ft, so when they're not being hauled up anymore, the ocean does its magic on the rope and creates these incredible tangles that no human could possibly make. And some of them are very beautiful and, you know, just kind of awe inspiring. The. The strength of the ocean. And of course, as it's being made into big knots, it's degrading the plastic, all the ropes, plastic. None of it is a organic material anymore. So it's creating lots of microplastics and chemicals being expressed into the ocean. And so it's. It's kind of a. In addition to being dangerous or the marine life, it's also major pollution.
05:35
Constance Old
This cleanup a week ago that was out on Paddock's island, and There were probably 40 people each day for three and a half days, and we collected over 10,000 pounds of garbage. Specifically, were focusing on plastic. So I was talking to one of the people who work for center for Coastal Studies and was sort of, does it make a difference? Whatever. And I loved what he said. His name's Mark Adams. He said, the project is the change, meaning the scale is not, you know, don't focus on the scale. Focus on the 40 people a day who are. Who care. And I really love that. I Thought that was cool. The artist, if my role is consciousness raising and I'm that can be at.
06:25
Constance Old
For a variety of scales, sitting on the street in New Canaan and actually, you know, basically doing a demonstration of rug hooking with sales receipts. You know, people stop by and they talk. And interestingly to me, the work that I make with. With consumer detritus fascinates young people. I think it's partly because of the craft. Like kids love it because it's a fairly simple craft and so they can understand it. And then in terms of selling my work, it's sort of people between the ages of 30 and 40 which I find so interesting because I guess because they get it right away, right? They can, they. I'm 60 and was alive on the first Earth day, which is why I'm interested in eco arts. I was 10, so I'm over 60 actually. Whatever.
07:34
Constance Old
And so I feel like people that are generation or generation and a half behind me, their awareness of trash and trying to reuse it to make something beautiful, that's like a no brainer for them. They've. They've grown up with it. So that's kind of cool. And kids, you know, it's always fun. If you can get them interested, I mean they're impressionable. Then to have children actually interact with the materials is good. The, the event at Katona Museum of Art that was in the education department and I was. There was a. There was a exhibition about carpets that were like massive sized rugs that were commissioned. They commissioned famous artists to design carpets. And then they had weaving studios make those carpets in like Turkey. And I think most of them were made in Turkey. I'm not positive about that.
08:47
Constance Old
Anyway, so for the education department I set up a. They had this really cool alcove where I set up hung long pieces of construction fencing. Fencing orange construction fencing. And the people at the museum and the kids that were coming into the. To do the workshops and I brought in all kinds of plastics and then people just wove that stuff into the panels of construction fencing. And they were quite messy and quite full. And I was really excited because I then took them back to my studio and reworked them, which is why I call them crowdsourced, which like it's kind of an automatic palette in a funny way. Like I didn't actually choose what was where in the composition, but I did modify it either by wrapping or weaving or.
09:45
Constance Old
And then ended up with these plastic paintings with like a controlled palette that I didn't pick. It's kind of an interesting parameter. One thing about back about palette, because some of. One of the people I found, one of the artists who inspired me the most is a guy. It was a guy named Dan Flavin. He was a minimalist artist and he painted with fluorescent lights. So totally different. But I ended up doing the index for his catalog resume as a graphic design project. And it was a really great exercise in learning about controlled palettes. He used these fluorescent light tubes made by GE that there was only a set number of them and set sizes and there was a warm set and there was a cool set and they were, you know, 4ft long, 3ft long, 2ft long, whatever.
10:45
Constance Old
And he figured out this way to rig them so that they would project light in. They were sculptures, project light into a corner or whatever. Named Dan Flavin. I thought, wow, this is so cool. Not only is the work cool, but he controlled his palette and then saw what would come from it. So I still feel like that's sort of an operating principle behind what I do. Although it looks a lot more baroque and I say paper and plastic and obviously that's huge. But then within that, I will control the palette and then work with it and see where it takes me. It's an interesting form of self portraiture, right? It's not. It's not a painting of my face or. But that. That book of lists, which is a book in three volumes now I've saved the list that was.
11:38
Constance Old
I don't even know when I made that long time ago. And I've continued to save my 4x5 inch lists on torn down 8 1/2 by 11 pieces of paper that come into the house. And I have really a very large collection of them now. And someday I haven't figured out exactly what form they're going to take, but it seems like such a great portrait. You don't even need to know what's on the list. Just again, I guess the sort of volume IQ keeps coming up like over the course of X number of years, say 30 years. The number of lists a person keeps. You know, you could document your life in photographs or you could have this like really long collection of lists that documents a life.
constanceoldfinalaudio.mp3
Meeting created at: 3rd Nov, 2025 - 3:45 PM