Hayground School Students Turn Beach Trash Into a Work of Art

For the past several months, students at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton have been turning trash into a very specific kind of treasure — a work of art that is the result of an impressive collaborative effort, and can serve as a powerful reminder for the community at large.

Since October, students ages 5 through 13 have been making treks to nearby beaches in the Bridgehampton and East Hampton area with the school’s Studio Art teachers, Sabra Moon Elliot and Perry Burns, to collect trash left at the beach — everything from discarded fishing nets to tangled jumbles of ribbons, cans and, of course, an endless array of plastics. They diligently collected the items, and in recent weeks have turned them into a giant sea turtle sculpture, which will be on display at the Parrish Art Museum starting on March 12.

Burns and Elliot are both artists-in-residence at the Hayground School, and Burns said the months-long effort, which they called the “Flotsam and Jetsam Project,” has been an educational, enriching and eye-opening experience for the students, and for them as well.

The idea was to turn the trash into a work of art, and eventually the students settled on making a sea turtle. They’ve dubbed their creation “the legend of the trash turtle,” and have even been working on creating a fictional narrative around the turtle as a mythical creature.

Burns explained the genesis of the project.

“Sabra and I were both thinking about the state of marine life in the area, with the resurgence of whales and dolphins being spotted at beaches this summer,” he said. “We’d hear parents talk about how every time they take a walk on the beach, they find trash. So we started wondering how much trash is there on our beaches, and is it affecting our marine life?”

That, Burns said, was the jumping off point for the idea of taking the students on short field trips to area beaches. He said that, at first glance, many of the beaches look clean, thanks to efforts by local town officials to keep them clean, but closer inspection reveals plenty of garbage and human waste left behind by beachgoers or washing up on shore.

“It’s a little bit disheartening,” he said.

Elliot agreed, but said she and Burns, as well as the students, quickly found a way to turn that kind of negative into a positive, and dealing with the trash challenged the students artistically and also in their development as responsible citizens and stewards of the planet.

“There is the creative process of trying to turn this huge pile of trash into something visually interesting,” she said. “The students have had to learn to be flexible and to problem solve. Using trash as the medium is an interesting task, because the students have to think of why certain objects look better next to other objects based on shape, color or texture.”

Elliot said they even tried altering some of the trash completely throughout the process, but ultimately decided to try and leave it more or less in the form they found it.

“We felt it was important to see what the actual objects were,” she said. “We’re using all of this as a teaching moment for the students to see the type of trash that’s being left behind and hopefully creating a culture of ‘leave no trace.’

“We want the students to learn and be aware of how humans impact the environment,” she added.

Working on the project drove that point home, and it was painful at times for the students to delve into the full scope of what humans have done to the planet.

“We tried to connect [the project] to the larger world and how trash in the ocean effects sea life,” Burns said. “The kids started to research that, and came across all kinds of pictures of animals stuck in fishing lines and nets, dolphins with plastic around them. For some of the younger kids, it was really emotional, and a couple of them cried at seeing the images, so it was a bit intense. It affected them and made them realize we need to do better, so we’ve talked about how we can do that, and how we can affect change.”

Parents and other Hayground teachers have gotten involved as well, gathering trash during family beach walks outside of school hours and bringing it in to contribute to the project, giving it the added bonus of being a school and community-wide effort.

The Hayground “trash turtle” will be on display at the Parrish Art Museum from March 12 through April 16, as part of the museum’s annual Student Art Exhibition.