Exhibit about Ashland Superfund Site Closes this Saturday

An exhibit focusing on the history and legacy of the Nyanza Colorant Plant Superfund site in Ashland, MA, by Prospectus artist Dan Borelli (The Cloud of Unknowing) is on view at the Ashland Public Library through December 19. Borelli, who is a native of the town, created the exhibit as the first stage of his Illuminating Futures art-based research project, the goal of which is to increase awareness and understanding of soil and water contamination in the town as well as promote psychological healing among affected townspeople.

This unusual exhibit features mappings of the town and the Superfund site, artifacts from Nyanza, a video touch-screen through which visitors can explore the science, history, and spread of contamination over time; news clippings; and recorded oral histories from people directly affected by Nyanza. The exhibit is built around and increases the accessibility of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s repository of remediation records for the site, which has been housed at the Ashland Public Library since the late 1980’s. Additionally, Borelli has extracted books from the library’s collection related to the history of the land and the town as well as more general topics such as environmental health and reassembled them into an artifactual timeline along the shelves within the exhibit. Visitors are invited to explore these books at tables within the exhibit and/or check them out from the library.

The exhibit is open to the public during library hours: Tuesdays through Thursdays 10 am – 8 pm; Fridays 10am-6pm; Saturdays 10am-5pm. The library, which is located at 66 Front St., Ashland, MA, is closed on Sundays and Mondays.

An opening celebration of the “Illuminating Futures” exhibit will be held at the library on Friday, Oct. 30, from 4:30 – 6 p.m., during which Borelli will give a talk. He also is presenting three “Walkshops” on Saturday, Nov. 7, at 10:30 a.m., Wednesday, December 9, at 6:30 p.m., and Saturday, Dec. 12, at 10:30 a.m. Each will last approximately 90 minutes and will include a tour of the exhibit, a walking tour of relevant sites in Ashland, and a question/answer period.

Borelli began the work that led to the “Illuminating Futures” project in 2010. As he has said, “The subject choice is not random; in fact, it’s deeply personal…. Some friends of mine even contracted a rare, fatal form of cancer, and Nyanza was posthumously verified as the source.” One of those friends, Kevin Kane, a year ahead of him at Ashland High School, spent the last months of his life researching the cancer that sickened him and others in the community in the 1990s, and eventually pushed public health officials to investigate the link with the Nyanza contamination. A report confirming the link was published by the MA Department of Public Health in 2006.

“I don’t feel like running from it is the solution,” Borelli says. “There’s also a sense of pride of being from there and having grown up with people that were affected by it and how they faced it — their strength and conviction and commitment.”

The two other components of “Illuminating Futures,” a memorial garden and a street light intervention, will be completed in late spring 2016. Generous funding for the project has come from ArtPlace America and from the National Endowment for the Arts through The Arts Company, a non-profit based in Cambridge, MA, and the parent organization of Artists in Context. For background news about the project, type Borelli into the search window on any page of the Prospectus website.