a Q & A with Stephen Dorsett

Stephen Dorsett “Salvaged Landscapes”
​a Q & A with Angie Reed Garner

Where do you find your trash? 

In the early stages of this series, the focus of my work was the problem of litter. I found the trash for my landscape dioramas in parking lots, on the side of the road, and in public parks. At this point, I barely modified the trash before I photographed it. As the series progressed, I began to minimally alter the pieces of garbage. Waves is an example of a diorama created with simple modifications. In this work, I took a clear plastic cup found in the back of a Home Depot parking lot and cut it into small rectangular pieces. I melted the tips of the topmost pieces until they became rounded like the droplets of the crest of a wave. Then, I painted the wave green with spray paint and shined a light through it as I photographed it to make it look translucent. 
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My recent landscape photographs are more self-reflective. I find materials for these works in my home and workplace. Recycling my own trash helps me contemplate my own consumer behavior. Cumberland Falls is an example of a piece created from materials found in my own home. The rocks are made of Styrofoam packaging from a photo printer I covered in pulverized paper egg cartons mixed with glue and painted with acrylic. The trees in the background are from an old pillow from my living room. 
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There for me is a maximal (wonderful) tension between the advertising collaged onto the dioramas (products so specific to people in this historical place and moment: Kettle Chips! Heineken! Bounty!), and the landscape images which seem eternal, iconic/ahistorical/unpeopled. Can you comment on this?

There is a tension between my photographs of pristine landscapes and my frenetic sculptures covered in advertisements because my attitude towards artmaking shifts between the pleasure it gives me to create, and the harsh truths it forces me to confront. While sculpting the dioramas, I see them as idyllic landscapes untouched by modern civilization. At these moments, I escape into the wilderness of my imagination feeling relaxed and hopeful about the future of the planet. When I finish photographing the dioramas, I plant them inside consumer product containers covered in coupons and advertisements. In this phase of the process, my focus shifts from contemplating the beauty of the landscape to the horror of its destruction. My dioramas become for me like tourism photographs with hotels, powerlines, vacationers, and billboards cropped out of the frame. From this perspective, each landscape is just another consumable product.
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I view my work in such different ways because art serves multiple purposes for me emotionally. Since I was a child, art was an escape. I drew landscapes with giant suns in the corner of the page because the process made me happy. Creating landscape dioramas still serves the same purpose for me. On the other hand, art is the voice of my conscience. I can’t look at a landscape for too long without thinking about ways I have negatively impacted it. My art makes me want to do better. 

In the beauty of the landscape photographs, I can forget that you are working with waste materials… and then the dioramas constantly remind me of waste, because that waste is present and explicit. What's this other tension, between natural beauty and waste, like for you?
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My work straddles the fence between activism and escapism. I have a lawn mower with a four-stroke motor that contributes to global warming. I created Polar Ice Caps, a sculpture of an ocean embedded in a gas can, to force me to grapple with this fact. My artwork does not absolve me from my environmental offenses. 

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​Plucking a few pieces of trash out of an endless sea of garbage has less of an effect on the environment than mowing my lawn every week. In one respect, my work protests my own bad consumer habits. I hope my work also causes viewers to contemplate their own consumer behavior. Paradoxically, I also want my work to help people forget about their troubles and blissfully admire the beauty of nature. 
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Regarding consumer habits, what would you like to drink at your ideal artist reception? What foods would you like to see served, and where did they come from? What utensils and plates and napkins do we use? Do we do zero disposables? And who does the dishes if so? Do we eat farmers' market tomatoes with our bare hands (yum!)?

My ideal opening reception centers around an interactive art piece. Guests would enjoy a selection of organic cheese, wine, vegetables and fruit fresh from the farmer’s market. These offerings would be served on compostable plates, cups, and utensils. When guests are done with their food and drink, they would throw it away in a clear garbage can lined on the inside with sculpted trees [that are] visible to guests even as it fills up. This interactive piece would allow viewers to see the connection between their consumer behavior and its impact on the environment. 
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​Cabin Fire is the only photo in this series with a human artifact, and it’s a foundational image for this series. Can you comment about that?

Cabin Fire is a metaphor for the relationship of humans to the environment. It was made from a towel, broom straw, aluminum foil, and a cardboard cabin set on fire. This work symbolizes the injury we do to ourselves when we damage the environment. We can’t live on a planet that has been destroyed. To reverse this self-harm, our way of life must be reengineered to benignly integrate with nature. Recycling, driving electric vehicles, and using LED lights are not enough to stop global warming, the great Pacific plastic patch, and mass extinctions. Moreover, these actions, though a step in the right direction, can relieve us of the urgency to push for changes that make a real difference. 

I hope this work initiates critical conversations about how to redesign our human habitats, food systems, transportation methods, and waste disposal procedures so that we can exist on a healthy earth for many millennia to come.  ​