Website Launched for Borelli’s “Ashland-Nyanza” Project

Artist Dan Borelli has launched a website that contains ongoing news about the many facets of his Ashland-Nyanza project, one of which is his 2013 Prospectus contribution, The Cloud of Unknowing. Dan’s work in Ashland focuses on a community liability– the Nyanza Superfund site, the toxic contamination of area water and soil by the Nyanza Chemical Plant. The subject choice is deeply personal for Dan, as Ashland is his hometown, and the Superfund site is directly responsible for contaminating his community. Friends of his contracted a rare, fatal form of cancer, and Nyanza was posthumously verified as the source.

As recently reported here, Dan already has received a $75,000 ArtPlace America grant through The Arts Company for the Illuminating Futures component of this work. In relation to Illuminating Futures, he has asked: “How do you transform a community that has chosen to suppress and ignore the risk associated with toxic contamination into an engaged and knowledgeable community focused on a healthy future?” Through color and light, he intends to “interrupt the Ashland community’s long-term malaise, help community members become knowledgeable about the current risks, and stimulate a new kind of stewardship of the land that will help to shape the social, physical, and economic future of Ashland.”