This story is part of our series, Wild Pennsylvania. Check out all of our stories here.
Monica Cervone McElwain takes the idea of “one person’s trash is another’s treasure” to a new level. As a mixed-media artist, she designed a kayak tour on the Allegheny River this summer where participants created sculptural art using trash and natural materials found on the river’s shoreline.
A full-time K-12 art teacher, Cervone McElwain is also part of the Pittsburgh Creative Corps with Shiftworks Community + Public Arts, the nonprofit that organized the tour.
Listen to the story:
On a cool morning in July, Cervone McElwain led a group of 15 kayakers to what she’s dubbed Turtle Cove, an inlet formed by Plum Creek running through the river. There, a strip of land juts out into the Allegheny, often used by fishermen or boaters.
For Cervone McElwain, Turtle Cove is a special gem.
“The rivers are so important to Pittsburgh and we need to use them more,” she said.
Kayakers paddle to Turtle Cove. Photo: Kara Holsopple / The Allegheny Front
The marina where Cervone McElwain and the kayakers launched isn’t far from the inlet but the short trip was a scenic one: calm waves rippling in a soft breeze; a heron flying overhead; newly built apartments dotting the hillside, small from a distance like cream-colored gingerbread houses.
After the group beached on the pebbly shoreline, Cervone McElwain instructed them to fan out and search for materials to make their art.
“There’s a whole bunch of just random findings, little treasures we can use,” she said. “Choose your adventure.”
Making art from what she’s found in nature has allowed Cervone McElwain to stimulate her creativity and indulge in a child-like joy.
“I think that there’s this inner childhood time to just breathe and relax, and not worry about everything else that we are so busy with in our everyday lives. To just explore,” she said.
Monica Cervone McElwain reconstructed a sculpture left by a previous group and encouraged members of this tour to look around for materials to make their art. Photo: Kara Holsopple / The Allegheny Front
Navigating through waist-high native plants, the group worked to uncover and collect what many would call trash: chunks of porcelain and glass polished by the waves, empty Coke bottles, and beer cans. Many of the items are unidentifiable pieces of plastic, metal, and rubber weathered or broken beyond recognition.
The most exciting find for Lydia Newlin was a charred plastic bag filled with melted popsicles. The yellow, green, and blue sugary liquid sloshed around in the popsicles’ plastic casings as she held the bag. They reminded Newlin of the treats a child might get on field day in elementary school.
“It’s really colorful but just trash,” she laughed. “But it looks pretty like that.”
The group used their collected debris to build sculptures, including elements like smooth river rocks, feathers, pinecones, driftwood, and even a small fish skeleton.
Cory Derringer and his fiance Abby Humphreys constructed a turtle sculpture. Balanced atop an old car tire, shards of metal siding, a square of carpet, and half of a plastic flower pot composed the shell. Muddied bricks and pieces of driftwood served as flippers.
It took them a moment to deliberate on a name for their “trash turtle” before Derringer said, “We could just call him Garbage.”
“Because he is garbage,” Humphreys responded, giggling. But that’s what was special about it for Derringer.
“Sometimes you throw something away and it’s gone from your mind, but it’s not gone, right? It’s just out of sight,” he said. “To see stuff that somebody threw away calls attention to [the fact] that it never went away.”
Lydia Newlin (left) and Sonya Dugal (right) made a larger-than-life person with found objects including logs, metal, and plastic. Photo: Kara Holsopple / The Allegheny Front
As the group worked on their sculptures, Sonya Dugal reflected on turning trash into something worth noticing.
“This has been a nice surprise to come out here and to collect some trash and make a statement with it,” she said.
For Dugal, that statement is “Don’t litter.”
After a few hours, Stephanie Boes came to see trash as treasure, finding enjoyment in transforming it into art.
“It’s also a little sad that there’s so much trash lying around that came out of the river,” she said. “But it’s nice to make something beautiful out of it.”
Katrina Lovshin was also surprised to find all this garbage.
“I know we’ve done a lot of cleaning up of the river, and it’s a much better space than [it used to be],” she said, “but there’s definitely a lot more that can be done.”
The sculptures’ reuse of trash highlighted an oxymoron of the day: the art is temporary but many of the materials they’re made of will last far beyond the artists’ lifetimes.
As they prepared to leave the cove, Cervone McElwain and the group collected their unused trash to be disposed of properly.
Shiftworks Community + Public Arts has more kayak tours and other events planned for this summer and fall. Learn more.
A sculpture on the shoreline with a pile of trash “treasure.” Photo: Kara Holsopple / The Allegheny Front
