Riverhead Artist Makes Recycled Jeans a Work of Art

Those favorite pair of Wranglers that don’t fit anymore? They might not end up in a landfill, thanks to Riverhead artist Sherry Davis.

A mixed-media artist, Davis’s artwork explores themes of history, transformation, growth and sustainability — specifically, anthropocenic-era hybrids that she creates from discarded materials, reworking using extensive fiber art techniques. Her latest piece is a denim sphere made completely out of woven discarded jeans.

“Harvesting Memories in Blue” consists of two parts, Davis said. The 12-foot sculpture is currently installed on a field located at Sound Avenue and Park Road in Riverhead —– practically down the street from where the artist works and lives.

But the idea of using denim wasn’t thought of overnight. Davis grew up in Toledo, Ohio, in the American Rust Belt, surrounded by the remnants of abandoned factories.

“I was just a generation away from farm life,” she said. “My grandmothers and aunts passed down to me the farmer ethos of thriftiness and the needlework skills of our homesteading ancestors, all of which deeply influence my work today.”

Davis said she holds many memories of her family’s farm close to her heart, canning vegetables and even sewing her very own first pair of bell-bottom jeans.

“The North Fork and East End of Long Island reminds me of home, and the warmness here of the whole community is pretty incredible,” she said.

It was as a young artist in Ohio when Davis started to reach out to factories to obtain recycled materials for her artwork, with plans of making sculpture pieces out of all different types of recycled material.

“When I saw all the waste that was out there, it was overwhelming,” she said. “There were mountains so tall … I’m shocked by the amount of waste we have in this world.”

Along with other materials she has used throughout the years, Davis started to collect denim that friends, family and strangers would drop at her doorstep, as well as surplus jeans from a local church that they can’t seem to sell.

With all that denim, Davis began creating “Harvesting Memories in Blue,” a project that was installed on August 25 and partially funded by a New York State Council on the Arts grant.

The sphere is made of steel, wool and solar-powered lighting, plus 1,000 pairs of upcycled denim jeans weighing about 1,000 pounds dry and significantly heavier when wet.

Davis added that it was a team effort. Her partner, Mark Alhadeff, crafted nearly 100 wooden triangles, and, together with her son, they engineered, built, transported and installed the steel armature for the sculpture to the field.

“Denim, to me, is kind of universal,” she said. “It cuts across all society, gender, social class … I think about labor, the farms and agriculture, and part of the whole idea of putting this denim sphere in a farm field is to highlight and honor the East End’s agriculture along with the labor farmers do to produce everything for us.”

That’s why it was important to place the sphere on a local farm.

“Sherry’s project perfectly reflects the East End community in both her process and the resulting artwork. She rallied much of the community in a traditional way as she gathered old jeans and recycled them into the components that make up the sphere,” said Wendy Weiss, executive director of East End Arts. “At the same time, the giant sphere feels like it is from a new tradition — a future where we honor our past.”

Davis added that she “can’t even calculate how many hours have been put into the sphere and the show.”

“I just hope the work I’m doing is inspiring and it’ll catch a few people thinking of their own East End memories,” she said. “Because it’s a wonderful place that we live in.”

While the 12-foot sphere will be on display indefinitely, the gallery show highlights the process behind its creation as well as other upcycled pieces.

“I think there’s something to be said about overconsumption and waste,” Davis said. “The sphere has over 1,000 pairs of jeans in it that nobody wanted or couldn’t sell.”

“Harvesting Memories in Blue” was made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by The Huntington Arts Council Inc. Through October 13, a smaller version of the sphere will be showcased with documentation at East End Arts’ 11 West Gallery in Riverhead.