Janet Nolan (B.V.A., 1976) incorporates everything from squashed aluminum cans to colorful plastic bottle caps to broken umbrellas and transforms them into sculptural works that turn “depleted debris into vibrant art.” Influenced by Robert Rauschenberg’s assemblages and the structural patterns and spreading frameworks found in nature, Nolan creates art that is playful, colorful and thought-provoking—expressing themes of redemption and elevation through the rectification of consumer waste.
The Auburn alumna and Montgomery native learned early on the repurposing aesthetic from her beloved uncle, a gentle Alabamian mechanic that taught her a special empathy toward common, unwanted items by “reconstructing everyday broken things into useful objects; like old metal coffee pots into lamps with colander shades.”
Nolan’s diverse body of work has been exhibited at universities, galleries and museums throughout the country; works that convey movement and varying moods through hard and soft materials swirling and climbing the spaces of galleries like kudzu vines. In “Please Play Again,” a cheerful optimism speaks through Nolan’s art, asking us to shift our expectations of recycling, rescue and revival.
