The Greening Of Our Beaches

The Greening Of Our Beaches 2018
120″ x 120″ x 14″ floor piece
Glass, (blown and cast) sand, handmade paper
(In collaboration with Ben Giguere, Gather Glass, Providence, RI)

For The Greening Of Our Beaches, Joan Hall has collected and displayed sands from around the world. This work of art was inspired by an article that hall read about Miami Beach running out of sand, and experts proposing to replace the lost sand with ground glass*. The circular platform in the work evokes the continuous relationship of cause and effect and also builds on the artist’s personal iconography of compass shapes which can be found in the other works in this gallery.

The Greening Of Our Beaches, explores the complicated cause-effect chain of events causing the loss of sand. Plastic pollution has contributed to the rising ocean temperatures. The rise in ocean temperatures has caused coral to disappear, which the fish feed on to create sand. Thus, beaches are losing an essential aspect of composition and identity: sand.

“The title is a play on my idea that if we ground up green glass there could be green beaches.”
Joan Hall

*Lizette Alvarez, “Where Sand is Gold, The Reserves are Running Dry.” The New York Times (August 25, 2013)
Francine Weiss, Ph.d.
Senior Curator, Newport Museum Of Art

Exhibition: Sea Of Heartbreak, Newport Art Museum, Newport RI