Sofia Plater picks through garbage and retrieves random items: a screen door, pieces of a box spring, a baking sheet, a tomato cage, paper and foam packaging, a rusty grate she found in the sand on Cape Cod. She manipulates them, collages them into a loose grid.
Plater’s artistic installations are both commentaries on recycling and a visual autobiography.
Plater, who lives in Newton, Mass., has a show opening Oct. 18 at Real Art Ways in Hartford. She is one of six young visual artists who have been awarded Real Art Awards. The others, who also will get solo shows at yet to be determined dates, are Keith Clougherty of Massachusetts; Kylie Ford of Maine; and Niki Kriese, Mateo Nava and Liona Nyariri of New York.
In conjunction with the opening of Plater’s exhibit — along with four others by artists Hong Hong, Maggie Nowinski, Balam Soto and Noe Jimenez — Real Art Ways hosts its monthly Creative Cocktail hour from 6 to 8 p.m. with an Afro-Cuban jazz band featuring Puerto Rican bongocero Anthony Carillo.
Plater finds many of the objects in places where she has lived or visited, such as her grandfather’s farm in Kintnersville, Pa., and her homes in Boston, Manchester, New Britain and Newington.
“These are odds and ends I can’t get rid of. I want to find the artwork within,” she says. “They’ve been where I’ve been. They categorize where I’ve lived, where I worked. These locations meant something to me.”
She is especially fond of metal grids. She fills them with cement and pushes it out through the grid holes.
“I’m testing their limits. These construction materials are not known for their aesthetic value. They’re made the way they are made because of efficiency. I find the inherent beauty in the shapes.”
One wall of the gallery will be filled with Plater’s recycled works, and the show also will include her “totems.” She creates small towers using discarded food containers as molds for cement, and creates small towers.
“These containers are so easy to use and throw out. Nobody is recycling them,” Plater says. “I use them and then I wash and recycle them. … Nothing is trash to me. I don’t want to add to the landfill.”
SOFIA PLATER: CULTCH is at Real Art Ways, 56 Arbor St. in Hartford, from Oct. 18 until Jan. 6. Plater will give an artist talk held Nov. 10. Admission to the Creative Cocktail Hour is $10; $5 for members. realartways.org.
On Other Walls
“Adeebah: My Life, My Story,” an exhibit of work by Syrian refugee Adeebah Alnemar, is at Unitarian Universalist Society: East, 153 Vernon St. in Manchester, until Nov. 4. A reception is Oct. 28 from 6 to 8 p.m.
“Equanimity,” an exhibit of photography by Andrew Reardon, is at ArtWalk at Hartford Public Library, 500 Main St., from Oct. 19, opening with a reception starting at 5:30 p.m., until Dec. 2. hplct.org/artwalk
“Of the Landscape” is at Widener Gallery at Austin Arts Center at Trinity College, 300 Summit St. in Hartford, until Dec. 1. Artists are Joseph Byrne, Susan Bogle Finnegan and Elizabeth Meyersohn. The gallery will be closed Nov. 20 to 25. trincoll.edu.
