Cardboard creatures cling to the walls and hang from the ceiling in the Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center. Photo courtesy Erin Jenkins / Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center
The “Sounds Deep” exhibit, which is showing until March 9, is the vision of artist Arthur “Art” Costa and museum exhibition director Sarah Freeman.
by Jordan Barbour, Community News Service A small train station turned contemporary art museum in Brattleboro brings the mysterious depths of the ocean to the blustery mountains of Vermont.
In the Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center, floating octopi and as-yet-unnamed creatures of the deep hang from the sides and ceilings of a small room. Red and blue lights cast strange shadows. A low thrum in the air makes the exhibit seem to inhale and exhale with life. It’s hard to believe these strange ocean dwellers are, in reality, made only of cardboard and hot glue.
The “Sounds Deep” exhibit, which is showing until March 9, is the vision of artist Arthur “Art” Costa and museum exhibition director Sarah Freeman.
The 76-year-old Costa makes all his 3D creations entirely out of recycled materials.
Having grown up on a small farm in Modesto, California, Costa often found himself creating “something out of nothing,” he said in a recent interview. He would fashion toy cars from plastic containers, cardboard.
“We couldn’t waste anything, so I often was building things out of whatever I could get my hands on,” said Costa.
It wasn’t until college that he realized he could turn his talents into a career. Inspired by the California Funk movement — a style of abstract expressionism that focuses on using nontraditional and repurposed materials — Costa began what he calls his “unusual” approach toward art.
One spiked creature shines in the lights of the Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center. Photo courtesy Erin Jenkins / Brattleboro Museum & Arts Center
In the early ’90s, Costa met a woman in a Celtic music class he was taking for fun. That woman would eventually become his wife, and he followed her back to her home in southern Vermont in 1996. He’s lived in the town of Putney as an artist and teacher ever since.
“I didn’t know anything about Vermont at all, but I flew out here, and it was destined to be my place to live,” said Costa. “There’s a lot of the same kind of attitude here, you know, not wasting anything and a lot of the not overdeveloping areas — all the sort of thing that was out of my childhood.”
His move to Vermont initially challenged him to find a new medium. Construction sites were few and far between compared to California — and so were the types of waste that came along with them, his materials. What Costa did find, however, was a surplus of cardboard that would fuel his creative endeavors.
Costa approached the Vermont Arts Council not long after his move, and the organization began supporting and promoting his work. During his time with the council, he became an established Vermont artist and taught art programs at many elementary and high schools across the state.
But a few years ago all the work caught up to him. He was feeling the physical toll, especially on his hands, so he made the decision to start working part-time at the Putney Public Library and focus only on his own studio time rather than traveling around for school and grant work.
The shift allowed him to focus on the creative process purely for its own merits and his own interests — a way to explore topics without any plan in mind, such as the deep-sea floor, and get his passion projects into places like “the wonderful railroad museum.”
Working with the Brattleboro Museum specifically has been a goal of Costa’s ever since moving to Vermont, he said.
Once he had a “good body of work,” he reached out to the museum and invited a curator — Freeman — to his home for a studio visit. Freeman was already familiar with some of Costa’s work with the Vermont Arts Council and thought his latest creations offered an exciting new avenue for the museum.
“I love that he has a sense of humor while also addressing issues that are challenging,” said Freeman, “like using fanciful and funny creatures to open people’s eyes.”
Inspired by the book “Soul of an Octopus” by Sy Montgomery and videos from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Instagram page, Costa became fascinated by the “otherworldly” nature of ocean critters. He hopes his creations will inspire more people to protect sea-dwelling denizens affected by a rapidly changing environment due to climate change.
Freeman, who has been with the museum since 2015, has found it fun to collaborate with Costa and help him create a “real-life” feeling to the exhibit space. She even helped work with Collin Costa-Walsh, Costa’s son, who graduated from Ithaca College in 2022 with a degree in cinema production, to create the deep-sea soundscape that echoes against the gallery walls.
Freeman recalled bringing a longtime friend and her 8-year-old daughter to the exhibit for the first time. Initially, the girl thought the exhibit was too scary and didn’t want to go in, but Freeman went in with her and encouraged her to lie on the floor and feel the vibration from the sound.
“After that, this kid I barely knew was saying the most wonderful things and asking these great questions,” said Freeman. “It was no longer scary for her.”
Photos and a video of the exhibit can be viewed online.
Although the exhibit will be removed by the end of the week, Costa said he is ready to get back in the studio. He’s also teaching a cardboard sculpture workshop at the Brattleboro Museum on March 9 at 2 p.m.
Although Costa isn’t sure what will come next, he’ll keep on exploring his love for the ocean and all that is hidden in its dark, deep depths.
The exhibit, “Sounds Deep” by Art Costa, leads with a blurb. Photo courtesy Erin Jenkins / Brattleboro Museum & Arts CenterThe Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.
