New River trash becomes art installation in Giles County

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PEARISBURG, Va. — Trash from the New River has been transformed into a new art installation in Pearisburg.

The installation will feature four new sculptures on a walking trail around the town’s community center and ball fields and one sculpture in the window of the Giles County Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s just good to see what people can do with trash from the New River,” Pearisburg Mayor Robert Dickerson said.
For the artists it was an opportunity to convey the importance of the river to their lives and to symbolize rejuvenation. The art is the collaborative work of ReNew the New, Giles County government officials, the town of Pearisburg and the Giles County Arts Council.

Ann Goette, founder of ReNew the New, said combining culture with nature is important to locals.

“It’s really a wonderful way to have the arts and river celebrated together,” Goette said. “I think it’s a symbol of how Giles is expanding.”

Goette said the river is helping to bring tourism and is growing the economy.

Her organization has been working on river cleanups since 2006 and has pulled a wide variety of trash out of the river in 10 total cleanups. Trash collected in a March cleanup was used in this art instead of having it all taken to the landfill, Goette said.

Tacie Jones led a group of six Giles County teens in constructing a sculpture titled “Rebirth” made out of scrap metal, wood and an old bed frame.

Jones assembled the teens at the Newport Recreation and Community Center as part of LoCo Arts — a nonprofit meant to bring art to kids. They met once a week during the fall and discussed an ideal society that would ultimately harken back to traditional values. The talks inspired “Rebirth” and the kids spent much of the spring putting it together.
Getting the teens excited about putting together a sculpture was an important opportunity to spread culture in Giles County, Jones said.

“It was just cool to see them involved in the arts,” she said.

Plus, the kids were looking forward to getting checks for their participation.
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The artists were commissioned with $6,000 worth of funding, said Ken Vittum, Pearisburg town manager.

The $6,000 came from a total pot of $10,000. That money is $5,000 from the town of Pearisburg and a matched challenge grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts. The commission is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, Vittum said.

The project should also serve as a lesson for how wasteful people can be, said Corbin Vierling, who, with her brother Tim Vierling, made a fish consisting of rebar and recycled beer and wine bottles. The sculpture will be hung in a tree near the Pearisburg Library.

“It’s made me very aware of how much we throw away,” Corbin Vierling said.