Nyssa Collins is a multidisciplinary artist and musician originally from Burlington, North Carolina, and currently based in Knoxville, Tennessee. She creates puppetry, giant creatures from unconventional materials, and experimental animation. In March, she unveiled Rubbish the Raccoon, a seven-foot-tall sculpture at West Franklin Street Plaza commissioned by the Town of Chapel Hill for Earth Day to bring awareness to sustainability. Collins is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, studying studio art.
How long have you been doing art?
I started professionally making art about seven years ago, in my late 20s. I got to work with Paperhand Puppet Intervention, and working there made me realize that art could be much more spectacular than something that only lives on walls and in galleries. This really inspired me to become an artist.
What inspires or motivates you when making a piece?
Two main things: first, I usually respond to something I’m curious about at the time, whether a particular method, an idea, or something that I think needs to look in the world. Second, I would say making art that people can have a nice connection to, but something that really considers its audience and is funny or warm and welcoming to interact with.
How did the Rubbish the Raccoon sculpture come to be?
I was a participating artist in the Uproar Festival of Public Art. The festival was through the Orange County Arts Commission, which had its first festival last summer. I believe Katie Murray of the Orange County Arts Commission and Steve Wright of the Chapel Hill Cultural Arts Commission organized it. I made a sculpture for that, and it won the Chapel Hill Commission award, so the town of Chapel Hill approached me and asked me if I could make a sculpture for Earth Day.
What was the inspiration and process for making the sculpture?
The town of Chapel Hill specifically asked for a large animal made out of trash, and I’ve made other large animals before, so I think that’s why it was on their mind. But I’m also in grad school, so I used it as an opportunity to learn how to weld, and I was curious about using an unusual material to make fur, which I did with plastic bottles. Instead of just having them fixed down, I was experimenting with how to hang them so that they could move a little bit like fur.
What do you find most important about celebrating and bringing awareness to Earth Day with art?
Most or all of the exterior of the Rubbish the Raccoon sculpture was made from beverage containers, and as I was working on it, I was getting material from college campuses. So, I went to Tennessee University and the University of North Carolina and worked with Madison Haley of the Haw River Assembly. Madison was bringing bottles that had been retrieved from the Haw River, and I think it was really alarming to see how much waste is generated by people using cans and bottles, and a lot of plastic bottles don’t make it to the recycling center. Plastic also doesn’t recycle very efficiently. People purchase a beverage and think that it can be recycled, but they’re not aware of the huge number of bottles and cans being used every single day. So basically, the sculpture suggests trying to use reusable containers and avoiding single-use plastics whenever possible.
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