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The Rhode Island-based artist creates sculptures from trash that look like wildlife from one perspective — but reveal themselves as much more when you take a closer look.
“Works in Progress” highlights artists across a range of disciplines whose work deals with ecological themes. Considering the particular role that artists play in the climate movement, this column shares their voices and provides a glimpse behind the curtain into their creative processes and experiences.
Thomas Deininger, a Rhode Island-based artist who works in various mediums, has gained attention in recent years for his sculptures of wildlife — often birds and fish — made of trash. The anamorphic sculptures jut out from the wall in such a way that, from a straight-on viewpoint, they look like a particular animal. But as the viewer moves around the sculptures, the subject matter obscures into an abstract amalgamation of plastic toys and scavenged trash.
With the funds from his painting, Thomas started a permaculture farm where he cares for rescued animals. Bluedot contributor Lily Olsen spoke with him about his early artistic endeavors, the hidden messages in his artwork, and why he’s so fascinated by birds.
Lily Olsen: How did you get started as an artist?
Thomas Deininger: As a kid I had some learning issues — dyslexia, ADHD, and all that — and so school was pretty difficult for me. But I always felt really comfortable expressing myself drawing or building things.
I also was very outdoorsy. I grew up in Norwell, Massachusetts, and I lived in a wooded area with ponds and a river. As I got older, surfing and skiing interested me. I went to school to study art in Newport, Rhode Island, where there was a really good surf break. I knew I was happiest when I was in the water and drawing.
When I graduated, I started traveling the world to go to some of the surf spots that I read about. And that's what took me to the South Pacific, like the Cook Islands, Fiji, and Tahiti. I was watching plastic pollution roll into these pristine islands. And so I knew somehow I wanted to address the idea of consumption and waste.
LO: How has your work evolved?
TD: I started using objects and painting on them and doing these big kinds of collages with objects. And then I thought maybe the best way to get more abstraction, which is what I was looking for, is by not painting anything at all. And so I started doing these really large mosaics out of all found materials, and that's what kind of got me on the map. I've just refined that and made it smaller and focused on wildlife.
I started using one-point perspective and pulling the things off the wall a little bit more so that they'd be more abstract up close. Then I could also tell narratives inside that column of space. So it was really just extending my canvas out into space instead of dimensionally wide or tall. That's what got me into my current modality.
LO: Can you tell me about how you choose your materials?
TD: I go to the beach about four days a week, and I pick stuff up. It's hunter-gatherer, to be honest. And now I'm getting donations from people on Instagram. They don't like throwing this stuff away.
I also don't throw anything out. For example, if you go and buy some onions, they'll come in a plastic bag. And I save those plastic bags to use as chest and feather structures or to unify surfaces.
It also allows for subverting nostalgia associated with some of the plastics that are given to our children as toys. They're not meant to be things that are held on to forever. They're made with fossil fuels.
LO: How would you describe your sculpture style and the reasons behind your artistic choices?
What I'm doing is not a practical solution. It's absurdist sculpture. Maybe it raises awareness. But really, it's almost metaphorical. Shifting our perspective is really what's most important about solving bigger problems. You know, nothing changes if we do the same thing over and over again, and just walk our way into an ecological crisis that is irreversible. It's about adopting a new perspective.
And so that one-point perspective thing is really important. That trick is supposed to set something off in your head. If you read comments on my Instagram, some people will respond to the environmental implications, other people pick up on the perspective, and other people pick up on the weird action figures doing subversive behaviors. There’s one with Elmo cutting people's heads off and putting them in fridges, and Woody having a mental health crisis. Societal problems are in our art. I think humans are a really fascinating species. But our perversities are on display for the world to see. And my work is about those things. When people perceive them properly, they're supposed to be kind of sad, kind of funny, maybe depressing, and a little magical. I'm trying to pack all these emotions in these single things.
Once we're done with something, we think this is worthless, get it away from me. But we also don't even think of its aesthetics. Where, now I can see a lighter in a parking lot or something and think that is the perfect thing for a blue jay tail.
—Thomas Deininger
And I like the idea that trash is really available for anybody to use. My work is making the invisible more visible. It has this effect where it makes me look at the natural world much more closely because I do a reverse biomimicry on the thing. Rather than looking at the natural world for solutions to my issues, I look at the manmade world for answers to things that happen in the natural world.
LO: And why is that?
TD: Because that's the puzzle I've made for myself. Hidden in all of the trash and detritus by the side of the road and people's garbage on the beach are birds that just need to be assembled and presented. And from one particular angle, all of these little disparate cast-offs can cooperate to give us a likeness.
It also has something to do with our values. Once we're done with something, we think this is worthless, get it away from me. But we also don't even think of its aesthetics. Where, now I can see a lighter in a parking lot or something and think, that is the perfect thing for a blue jay tail.
LO: Why do you think it is that you are seeing birds in trash and the natural in the manmade?
TD: I'm looking for the potential in the mundane. It's trying to find a poetic approach to this depressing problem of consumption and waste. And it's elevating that thing that’s unseen to be seen and to be something that's beautiful from a particular angle.
LO: Why have birds specifically been the subject of so many of your pieces?
TD: I'm just really fascinated with them. I kitesurf now. I was doing birds before that, but that gave me a real heightened awareness of how wings work. And so from a design perspective, I love the variety in the aviary world. I just love how evolution works out problems and designs for specific things. Like the barn swallows — those things are just amazing at switching directions. There are surfboards that have tails called swallow tails because they're good at pivoting. So there's being fascinated with the physical engineering and there's also a wonder about birds. Like why are male cardinals really red? It's probably to attract things away from the nest, because if the female was red, that would be attracting attention to the nest where the most vulnerable things are. And so you see these little things that make perfect sense.
Also, if you think about art history or even religion, it's often about things coming down from the heavens. Birds occupy this space that isn't available for us to occupy. I think humans have always been attracted to birds in a spiritual way.
LO: I’m wondering if you can give a specific example of a certain piece of yours and how you chose the subject matter, and how you used it to subvert perspective.
TD: There was a little nesting robin by my window, and I was just obsessed with it. So the next sculpture was going to be a robin, and where I found the chest feathers for that was at the beach in a bait net from a lobster trap. And so I knew that if I could perfectly pull that net apart, it would create a chest feathers structure that I would need for the robin. And then I found the right color kind of pens and other stuff for the other pieces. Now, this thing that would have bummed me out — a net washed up on the beach — I'm excited about because I can use it to express something.
LO: On one of your Instagram posts, which was an off-center shot of the piece, you wrote, “I always like the off angle shots more than the resolution images, they tell the truth. The illusion is the ultimate lie.” Could you elaborate on that?
TD: I have a meditation practice, and there's that point at which you feel like the whole world goes quiet and you get in tune. It's when the whole world makes complete sense.
That's really when the illusion is most convincing. We are just this amalgamation of the pale blue dot that Carl Sagan talks about. He says that whole bit about all the wars that ever happened, all the love, everything happened on this pale blue dot. You realize how insignificant and how profoundly important that thing is. We think what's happening in our tiny little worlds are of such incredible importance to the whole entire world. But they're just one little thing happening in one person's life at one moment. And that's the illusion of grandiosity.
