Art and Sustainability

February 19, 2025

By: Erin Parker, Interpretive Services Supervisor

When asked about her inspiration, Halima Afi Cassells shares that the “throughline or thread of my work for as long as I can remember is “how to create a thriving, happy life as an art project.” Her work as an artist and community member in Detroit includes a variety of creative endeavors from collages created from found and upcycled materials to the creation of the Free Market of Detroit, a pop-up space where people trade goods, services, and skills. As she looks forward to 2025, the Free Market will be opening a brick-and-mortar location.

A 2023 Kresge Award Fellowship winner for Interdisciplinary Art, Cassells has been creating art since she was a child. She shared that her public art didn’t start out with a sustainability focus, but that quickly became a driving factor in her work.

In 2024, Cassells was part of a project to create art in Eliza Howell Park from found, cleaned, and re-purposed plastic trash removed from the Rouge River. She led community-art workshops that focused on creating a sculpture for the park from the recovered garbage. An archway, leading park visitors to the river, was installed in summer of 2024.

A journey with art and environmental sustainability

“I became a mom when I was 22, and that is when I also started my journey with public art,” Cassells said. “How can I do this? I wasn’t necessarily thinking “sustainable” but how can I continue creating things I want to create and have my basic needs met?”

She was painting large-scale murals at that time, and started utilized giveaway paint, things that had been mis-tinted or were left over from other projects.

She added, “I learned the power of my own voice and asking – building relationships, have a number of conversations. I ended up creating four murals in exchange for things I needed.”

The delight she found in working outside the traditional systems of transaction would eventually lead to the creation of Free Market of Detroit, where everything is free and exchanged for either a tangible item like a piece of clothing or a skill or service, like teaching someone how to sew on a button.

That ethos now informs her current work, which is mostly in collage. Using upcycled, found, or repurposed items. “I don’t want to feel like a hypocrite in my own practice pouring plastic (paints) down the drain. I’m looking at paper sources, inks, upcycling magazines.”

Cassells is also inspired by her garden, making sculptures and working on having activities that wouldn’t harm the garden, the pollinators and other wildlife, and the waterways.

Her work with Sidewalk Detroit and Eliza Howell Park in Detroit included a series of community-based workshops to utilize plastic trash collected during an Earth Day event in the park to create a sculpture that was eventually installed in Eliza Howell. Projects like this connect all the aspects of Cassells’ work- including collaboration, community, upcycling and reuse of materials, and empowering Detroit residents to find a creative outlet.

Art and creativity

“I wish more people felt the power to tap into their own creativity and know that within their own circles, they have all the skills/resources/all the things necessary to create the things they need. True luxury is the luxury of time. Carve out time and then nurture whatever creativity people have – cooking, mending, making things.”

The Metroparks has invited Cassells to present on her work this March 13^th, at 11:30 a.m. Join the Zoom meeting here: Join Zoom  https://metroparks.zoom.us/j/83386941799

To learn more about Halima Afi Cassells and her work:

https://www.halimacassells.com/