Our newest film teaser for PLASTIC FREE ISLAND documentary film coming in Fall 2014: Plastic Free Island in ACTION~!! A time-lapse capsule of the 2 week action on Kefalonia:  the Plastic Free Island core team, its friends, sponsors, outreach coordinators and hundreds of engaged citizens with 10s of thousands of pieces of plastic removed from 7 coastal zone sites of caves and beaches of the island!  There were educational programs for university students, citizens and children’s workshops covering forensic plastic removal, loggerhead sea turtle conservation and single-use disposable plastic alternatives.  We had formal meetings with the government of the municipality and they have agreed to a formal adoption of the project.  We have developed a working board of directors in Kefalonia to continue to develop the model for Plastic Free Island.  And we made large-scale gallery installation and public art, which culminated in a performance in the town square of Argostoli and a screening of the short film below~ View film here on youtube~  

The universe works in mysterious ways:  GREENPEACE Rainbow Warrior III sails, purely by wind power using no petroleum, into Argostoli port on Kefalonia the day of our opening at the Ionion Center.  GREENPEACE Greece Defense Coordinator Dimitris Ibrahim issues Drifters Project Founder Pam Longobardi and Plastic Pollution Coalition CEO Dianna Cohen a special invitation to meet onboard to discuss our project:  they are here to protest the proposed drilling of the Ionian Sea and we join forces to protest and create positive action on the oil and plastic disaster.   This short cut is a teaser from our forthcoming longer documentary film PLASTIC FREE ISLAND, coming this fall, filmed and edited by Sergio Ko and Nickos Myrtou of Athens. This short film, shot aboard the Rainbow Warrior III, is a meeting between Dimitris Ibrahim, Dianna Cohen and Pam Longobardi discussing our mutual concerns for the Ionian Sea and the world ocean on the 29th anniversary of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior I. ~~~ Watch here on youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP0dhT0OkzU

Ionian Press, July 13 “The Plastic Free Island in Argostoli Square in a Lovely Manifestation” Ionian Channel TV, July 9 (aired) ‘Program: Plastic Free Island’ InKefalonia, July 8 (featured article with photos/videos) efimerida Kefalonia July 8 “No Straws for Koutavos” Kefalonia Press, July 13  ‘REPORT “KEFALONIA-MODEL:  PLASTIC FREE ISLAND”’ Kefalonia News, July 19 ‘Plastic Free Island, an innovative program that brings Kefalonia on the world stage …’ Kefalonitis, youtube, July 8 Kefalonia Press, July 8 efmerida Kefalonia, July 4, “Mission Accomplished Against Plastic Pollution- Journal Kefalonia“ Portoni.gr, July 5  “Meeting between the Vice Mayor Mr. Kekatos of Tourism Kefalonia and Drifter’s Project Pam Longobardi and Plastic Pollution Coalition Dianna Cohen the directors of the Plastic Free Island” Portoni.gr, July 4 ‘Kefalonia Plastic Free Island- Voluntary Cleaning of Fanare Beach’ InKefalonia, July 2, featured article “S.O.S. Plastic Sea”                      

About In 2014, we want to help Kefalonia become a Plastic Free Island. Plastic objects are the cultural archaeology of our time. They are a portrait of global late-capitalist consumer society, mirroring our desires, wishes, hubris and ingenuity. These are objects with unintended consequences. In an ongoing collaboration with the Ionion Center for Art and Culture, Drifters Project has been cleaning beaches and sea caves all around the incredible island of Kefalonia. In 2011, we collaborated with a sea turtle rescue project; in 2012, we cleaned a giant sea cave and made a short film, and 2013 was a collaboration between Drifters and Greek archaeologic project A.Sho.Re. and we made 2 more short films. Drifter’s Project methodology is to approach the sites as a forensic scientist, examining and documenting the deposition as it lay, collecting and identifying the evidence of the crime. 2014 announces the collaboration with Plastic Pollution Coalition!! For Plastic Free Island, we will be creating a template of social & artistic engagement. We are creating a international team of 40 students from Greece, Australia

April 16 – June 28, 2014.  Hudgens Center for the Arts Artist Talk:  June 21, 1:00 pm  Press Release  Review on ArtsATL    

With stunning visual impact and an astonishing array of ocean trash, internationally recognized artists create works of art for this exhibition from debris collected from beaches around the world. Plastic packaging in a throwaway culture finds its way into our ocean biosphere and then into the hands of artists. Our oceans and beaches are awash in plastic pollution propelled by gyre (rotating ocean currents). The exhibition explores the relationship between humans and the ocean in a contemporary culture of consumption. BUY HERE  ON AMAZON http://www.amazon.com/Gyre-Plastic-Ocean-Julie-Decker/dp/1861543557 Here is my chapter contribution: “Wilderness and Invastion:  Plastic Placemarkers of the Anthropocene”    http://www.anchoragemuseum.org/images/downloads/gyre/Pam_Longobardi_essay.pdf THE EXPEDITION The Anchorage Museum and Alaska SeaLife Center have partnered to bring an international team of artists, scientists and educators to the Alaska coastline June 7, 2013 to observe, document and collect marine debris. The team will spend a week traveling 450 nautical miles aboard the R/V Norseman traveling west from Resurrection Bay along the Kenai Peninsula coast, then crossing the Kennedy Entrance channel to Shuyak and Afognak islands. The expedition ends with an intensive cleanup of

  Event Horizon: Economies of Scale, (detail of installation), 2013, microplastic, plastic, oil, hydrocarbons, steel, gouache, acrylic, pigment on cyanotype over wood, 22″ x 18″ x 230″ SANDLER HUDSON GALLERY ENDLESS by Pam Longobardi November 1- December 14, 2013 Reception: Friday, November 1, 2013 7:00-9:00pm  Artist Talk and Film Screening:  Saturday, November 23, 2:00pm Sandler Hudson Gallery is pleased to present Pam Longobardi, the 2013 winner of the prestigious Hudgens Prize, one of the largest art awards given in the entire nation, in a solo exhibition entitled ENDLESS. This show combines new sculptural work from vagrant plastic removed from the ocean, sea caves and beaches of the world, along with Longobardi’s recent paintings on copper and paper. Collectively, these two modes of production explore the current condition of the earth and its inhabitants as humans embark on a new geological era, the Anthropocene. After discovering the mountainous piles of plastic debris the ocean was depositing on the remote shores of Hawaii, Longobardi began collecting and utilizing this plastic as her primary sculptural material, and founded the Drifters Project. Since

The GYRE exhibition tells a global ocean debris story through the work of more than 20 celebrated artists from around the world.  The 7,500 square-foot exhibition will include a section specific to Alaska featuring the 2013 GYRE expedition’s resulting scientific discoveries, as well as art created from the marine debris gathered on Alaska’s beaches during the journey. The exhibition also incorporates content from the Burke Museum’s Plastics Unwrapped, offering a balanced scientific and cultural history of how plastics are used in our daily lives.The GYRE exhibition is on view February through September 2014 at the Anchorage Museum.  Following its Anchorage debut, the GYRE exhibition will tour museums across the United States. Participating organizations: Alaska SeaLife Center Alaska Marine Stewardship Foundation Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center Blue Ocean Institute
Ocean Conservancy Harker School Mountain and Sea Productions National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Geographic Smithsonian Institution The Gyre project was generously funded by: Anchorage Museum Association Corporate Wetlands Restoration Partnership Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation Giles W. and Elise G. Mead Foundation National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Endowment for the ArtsNorth

The GYRE Expedition, a project I have been working on with the Anchorage Museum and Alaska Sea Life Center for four years, was an amazing success. National Geographic producer JJ Kelly and Josh Thomas have made a potent and beautiful film that is a Nat Geo feature video and profiled in the magazine. See magazine: www.slideshare.net/jimripall1/national-geographic-interactive-september-2013 See full film:  http://www.environmentandsociety.org/mml/gyre-creating-art-plastic-ocean and https://vimeo.com/121065020 Drifters Project is featured in a section called ‘NEXT.’  My family subscribed to Nat Geo all during my childhood, and my first ‘serious’ art experiences involved drawing pictures of the amazing animals, people and faraway places that NG brought to my home…to see my name in the magazine is beyond words~ The entire issue is a work of art,  thoughtful, beautiful and finely composed:  it calls the alarm of ocean changes, reveals the incredible artists of Kinshasa, the amazing male incubating cassowary bird and has a section highlighting women explorers. Its an amazing honor.

Something incredible has happened that will support my work in an untold multitude of ways – I have been awarded The Hudgens Prize. This prize is a gift made by anonymous donors and bequeathed by the Hudgens Center for the Arts.  It is one of the largest art awards in the US, a cash prize of $50,000 awarded to an individual artist. I am so honored to have been selected from the formidable finalists by the extraordinary jury of curators: Doryun Chong, Museum of Modern Art/NY and newly appointed as Chief Curator of M+Hong Kong’s new art museum opening in 2017 Toby Kamps, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Menil Collection Heather Pesanti, Senior Curator of The Contemporary Austin Press: Mother Nature News  Arts ATL NPR/WABE 90.3 Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Seescape At George Adams Gallery, NY George Adams Gallery’s summer show is Seescape, curated by Edward Boyer.  Spanning almost a century and a half of painting, drawing and photography, the exhibition explores the evolution of maritime representation from the sublime to the political. The artists included are: Dozier Bell, William Bradford, Vija Celmins, Lynn Davis, Pat de Groot, Chip Hooper, Chris Jordan, Lino Lago, Andrew Lenaghan, Pamela Longobardi, John Marin, Joel Meyerowitz, Fairfield Porter, Charles Seliger, William Trost Richards, Adam Straus, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Dan Torop and Worthington Whittredge. “…The sea has also become a vehicle for political expression for artists such as Chris Jordan and Pamela Longobardi who address the polluting effects of global commerce, overpopulation, and climate change; in the 21st century, the sea as subject is less a metaphor of transcendental space than a very real place systematically being destroyed by human profligacy and waste…” SEESCAPE will be on view from June 5 through August. Gallery hours in June are Tuesday through Saturday 10 – 6, Mondays by appointment. In July and August gallery hours are Tuesday

In 2012, we cleaned a massive sea cave of over 3000 pieces of plastic. In 2013, we want to clean an entire port.   I’m leading the Rally for Drifters Project Kefalonia, and I think you will be inspired by this campaign. Please take a moment to check it out. Join this Rally with me: https://rally.org/driftersprojectkefalonia Rally.org is a storytelling platform designed to empower users to fundraise and build social awareness on a large scale. Drifters Project/Kefalonia, Phase 3, Port Excavation proposes an expansion of Phase 1 (2011 exhibition and beach cleanings) and Phase 2 (2012 cave excavation and film) to encompass an ongoing collaborative project between the Ionion Center for Art and Culture and the Greek Naval Academy of the Ionion Islands for cleaning the ports of Poros (2013) and the major Port of Argostoli (2014) to create public art and educational outreach in the Naval Academy and Ionion Center of Kefalonia, and at the University of Athens. Drifters Project Team members include: Pam Longobardi (US, founder, artist and professor); Sarina Basta (US, curator and writer);

June 8, 2013 – Gore Point, Gulf of Alaska By 6:30 am, after the 9 hour passage from Seward in pitching 6 Ft+ swell, we stirred from bed to find ourselves in a glass-flat cove in complete silence. Full of asparagus frittata by the remarkable Norseman chef Aaron, we began mustering for our first beach landing at Gore Point. This particular location is achingly scenic, a beachhead strewn with a massive log berm studded with large blocks of styrofoam, the giant black buoys of tsunami debris and a shipwreck; slivery seal heads watch us from the surf. In approaching the site, it is important to me to try and read the message of the arrangements and juxtapositions of how things lie: I photograph these. My first photo was of a black rectangular shark egg case lined up in tandem with a similarly shaped black quart oil bottle: parallel universes of life and death. Mark Dion spent the afternoon collecting smallish objects that he arranged into an impromptu construction on the black sand. Andy Hughes patiently balanced flyswatters

You know you are in Alaska when the only bird you see is an enormous bald eagle flying right overhead…in downtown Anchorage…and its brilliantly sunlit at 10:00pm at night~ The crew is amassing:  Kip Evans and JJ Kelly have been out shooting B-roll all day, Mark Dion is scouting for birds, Andy Hughes arrives sometime tonight en route from the UK, and I am assembling my gear for the 7am bus to Seward and then, we set sail.  The Norseman is undergoing final preparations in Resurrection Bay.  Tonight we meet at the Anchorage Museum for crew introductions. And the big news is:  National Geographic will be doing a feature on the expedition this fall!!  Here is a teaser:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJuY0uy8Lbo

After more than 3 years in development, the GYRE expedition will sail in June 2013!!!!  Departing from Seward, Alaska and following along remote coasts of Kodiak Island and the upper Aleutian islands, the research vessel Norseman  will travel for 10 days with a crew of artists, scientists, policy makers and crew to discover, research, and gather the vast amounts of plastic waste on these shores.  After two scouting missions in 2010 and 2011, I can report untold amounts of material from all over the world on beaches so remote humans rarely tread.  And now, the debris from the Japan earthquake/tsunami disaster of 2011 is arriving in droves.  We are looking at hi-rez aerial photos of beaches like this (note:  the scale is deceiving, the black object on right side is a giant buoy, about 5 feet long…) THE EXPEDITION The Anchorage Museum and the Alaska SeaLife Center will partner to bring an international team of artists, scientists and educators to the Alaska coastline in 2013 to observe, document and collect marine debris. THE EXHIBITION An exhibition will debut

Longobardi named one of 4 finalists for the prestigious $50,000 Hudgens Prize! The finalists were chosen from a pool of 370 applicants by Doryun Chong, associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Toby Kamps, chief curator of the Menil Collection in Houston; and Heather Pesanti, senior curator at AMOA/Arthouse in Austin and until recently curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. The $50,000 Hudgens Prize will be awarded by the jury based on studio visits and the works exhibited in the Hudgens Prize Finalists’ Exhibition. The winner will be announced on August 10. Longobardi, an Atlanta resident, has had over 40 solo exhibitions and 65 group exhibitions in galleries and museums in the US, China, Italy, Spain, Finland, Poland, Japan, Germany, Greece and Monaco. Her artworks are in numerous collections both public and private. A recipient of many awards, Longobardi is Professor of Art at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia and created the Drifters Project in 2006, an ongoing environmental art intervention involving photography and installation focusing on the

Part of the project of cleaning the cave was conducting a forensic study on the totality of the materials inside. As each geographic location has its own character, each beach cleaning creates a portrait of that location, its culture, its industry, its values. The contents of the sea cave create a similar story. The following are the total tallies of each and every individual plastic object that was taken from the cave. 1310 pieces of Styrofoam (polystyrene), ball-type, white or black 320 PETE plastic beverage bottles 118 pieces of compressed foam, insulation, packing and aerosol, turquoise and yellow 73 HDPE bottles or containers 71 shoes or shoe parts, predominantly slipper or flipflop-type 37 net floats, Greek style small red foam donuts 37 bottle necks or tops 11 lighters 2 floatation devices 2 brooms 2 toilet parts 5 English words: Nestle (2), Mobile Oil (2), Gulf (1) 1 sunglasses 1 balloon _________________________ 1990 TOTAL pieces of plastic

View the film here by clicking here: Giant Sea Cave Excavation ~ Drifters Project Kefalonia The cave is enormous, an upward-sloping bowl shaped amphitheater.  Once you pass the rocky water entrance, you enter a boulder field that stretches back 150 feet or more.  The first large object you see is a completely rusted out 50 gallon drum 40 feet from the water’s edge.  But its the fringe of visible objects at the far back of the cave that are of concern, the thousands of pieces of plastic:  styrofoam blocks and balls shaped by the sea, water bottles, shoes, 5 gallon multi-colored containers, a second 50 gallon drum and other oddities. Just a handful of steps in from the waves crashing on the rocks, you notice that the strewn boulders and rocks are covered with a thick layer of ochre dust, in some places up to 6 inches deep.  This dust is dry to the bone and extremely fine; its presence is mysterious when you consider that the furious storms of winter had waves large and powerful enough to

We had a one day window and a single chance to make this film. All forces collided to help us. For 7 days we tried to enter the cave and only 1 time were we successful in order to strategize the entry and exit with everyone safe, the plastic removed and bags not broken to put it back in the sea. The amazing shooter Sergio Ko was in the water with us, and getting bashed by the waves not to drop or crash his expensive camera. The incredible editor Nickos Myrtou created a powerful document in a single day. Craig Dongoski made a searing soundtrack with my choice of pilot whale songs for the underlying theme. My powerful team of girl swimmers Sarina Basta and Maria Rigatou gave it their all. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. View the film here by clicking link below: Giant Sea Cave Excavation ~ Kefalonia

My current expedition Drifters Project Kefalonia:  The Giant Sea Cave Excavation was inspired by a heartbreakingly poignant discovery I made last summer here in Kefalonia. In July 2011, working on my Drifters Project phase I: One World Ocean, I went to a remote beach by boat with a local fisherman.  He described this beach as having some of the most debris on the island.  It was spectacularly beautiful, but even from the crystalline water 100 yards offshore, I could see the telltale signs of plastic impact.  The amazing feature of this beach were the sea caves visible in the right hand side of the image.  I swam in to shore and began to collect the plastic garbage, filling several large bags in just a short time.  I then crossed the sharp rocky divide that separated the beach from the caves and was stunned when I looked inside:  the caves were stuffed with innumerable pieces of plastic, nets, styrofoam and yes, right on top, the NUMBER ONE symbolic plastic disgust object:  a toilet seat.  If there was ever a clearer image of the

Somehow, I just had the smoothest international travel experience I have ever had, after scores and scores for the past several decades….the Greece we see on the news is not the whole story. Life is going forward, people are living, struggle is real and tensions are high (there is a neo-Nazi party that now has a seat in Parliament) but, as is usually true, individuals are hearty and full of heart, riding this transforming wave as best they can. I actually feel a similar vibe in the air here to Atlanta or other US cities, with the added twist of the omnipresent Euro worker strike. In Athens last year this time, it was taxi drivers. This time it is hotel workers. Still, a collective and not anarchy… On a more quiet and rural island, the heat of the sun is interminable. Its near 100+, but unlike Atlanta, its a dry heat. The natural world is buzzing and alive, but recent fires, set by shepherds to clear more land for their flocks, have destroyed centuries old evergreen trees,

Drifters Project Kefalonia 2012 will be excavating a giant sea cave to reinsert the contents into cultural space.  Analysis of the cultural archaelogy of the cave and subsequent installation will reveal a new Odyssey for the recently discovered true birthplace of Homer.