Maria Richa, TC alumnus of Art Education and Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Bank Street School is displaying an art exhibit at the Gottesman Library which weaves together sustainability, her homeland of Puerto Rico and her interests in coral reefs. Richa’s work, inspired by her walks on beach during Covid-19 lockdowns collecting pieces of broken glass, porcelain and clay, cultivates a sense of connection between what has been rejected or discarded.

Read more about Richas work below: 

This collection is about healing and about connecting what I care about and where I'm from. I repurposed bits and pieces of other people's past in a way that creates beauty and shows a transformation that is sustainable.

We all experience the pandemic in different ways. Being stuck in an apartment in Queens, I found that working with my hands and engaging with materials provided comfort and safety. I took solace in walks on the Bottled Beach of Dead Horse Bay. On these walks, I began to collect broken glass, porcelain, and clay along the shore. I felt the need to save the scraps that the beach was rejecting and spitting out on the shore. After these walks, I carefully cleaned and sorted all the objects so that I could study them. In the process, I began to see a connection between the rejection of these objects and the survival of the coral reefs. The more I collected, the more I left I was protecting the reef. 

What you see in this exhibit is a combination of handmade sculptural forms that bring color, shape, form, and detail to found objects. As I sculpted around the found objects, I began not to create a small sustainable reef which in turn connected me back to my homeland, Puerto Rico, and my interest in coral and reefs.