DURHAM, Conn — The Durham Fair offers so much food and fun each Fall season, but this year, one University of Hartford professor is welcoming anyone to join her in a sustainability project.
Katherine Owens, a political science professor at the University of Hartford, has created numerous plastic art projects that hang on walls around the state. Owens’ projects are usually whales or other sea life that are made entirely of plastic mailers.
Owens said, “They’re between a mosaic, a quilt and mural.”
Owens is using a set up inside the Discovery Barn at the Durham Fair for her latest project – a Holstein Cow made of plastic bags, and she’s invited the public to lend a hand.
Owens said, “I’ve been working on these projects for many years where I make life-sized portraits of different animals that are harmed by plastic pollution, and for the Durham Fair, we thought we would do a life-sized portrait of a cow because cows actually eat plastic too and are harmed by plastic pollution.”
During the Friday morning of this year’s Durham Fair, Owens had no problems attracting helping hands to pick up a needle and thread and join in.
She said, “Everyone who works on it gets to sign the back, so there is a really cool record of everyone who helped to create this portrait together.”
Owens’ plastic works hang on walls across the state, the most well-known is the sixty-foot-long Sperm Whale, which has now found a home inside the main terminal at Bradley International Airport. She said she hopes that the powers that be at the Durham Fair keep the new life-sized plastic cow mural and hang it in one of the fair buildings.
Owens added, “I just want people to be aware of the plastic they are using and trying to reduce that plastic and think about the animals that it harms.”
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Jim Altman is a reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at jaltman@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook, X and Instagram.
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