Pamela Longobardi

Pam Longobardi (born 1958) is an American contemporary eco artist and activist, currently living and working in Atlanta, Georgia. She is known internationally for sculptural works and installations created from plastic debris, primarily from marine and coastal environments, as a primary material. Much of her work includes community-based research, such as carbon or plastic audits, as well as collaborative art creation.

In 2014, Longobardi was awarded the title of Distinguished University Professor of Art at Georgia State, and was namedArtist-in-Residence of the Oceanic Society.

Pam Longobardi grew up in New Jersey, the child of an ocean lifeguard and a Delaware state diving champion, and credits her parents' relationship to the water with her own scientific and artistic interests. Longobardi moved to Atlanta in 1970.She received a BS in Science Education from Montana State University in 1982.

The entanglement of science and art is central to Longobardi's practice and aesthetic: "I see some aspects of the methodology of the artist and scientist as very similar: long periods of intensive research, immersion in materials to better understand their properties, inquisitiveness and curiosity as driving forces, a desire to unpack ‘reality’ to better understand our relationship to it."

Since 2006, Longobardi has been engaged in The Drifters Project.Begun in 2006, its name taken from the term drift – objects that are carried by currents and air. Ocean drift is, today, primarily plastic. Longobardi has collected this drift plastic to create abstract sculptures and installations.One iteration of The Drifters Project was displayed at the 2009 Venice Biennale, at the ARTE VISIVI collateral exhibitions. In 2010, Edizione Charta (Milan, NY) produced a catalog of selected works from the Project.

"All these things collapse for me in the drifting ocean plastic object: it IS an artifact of my specific human evolutionary time; it IS made from petroleum that is the fossil sunlight and ancient plants, animals and yes, dinosaurs, that roamed the past Earth; it IS a biological raft for invasive creatures; it IS a toxic floating time bomb that is changing the human and animal body and the very ocean itself; and it IS a future fossil of the Anthropocene."

In 2013 Longobardi was selected to be lead artist in the GYRE Expedition, an art-science research expedition that assembled a team of notable marine scientists, journalists, filmmakers and artists to trawl remote Alaskan coastlines and to document collaboratively the impacts of plastic pollution on these delicate ecosystems. Her colleagues on the expedition included chief exhibition scientist Carl Safina, artist Mark Dion, science photographer J.J. Kelly, photographer Andy Hughes, and others: all of these are featured, along with Longobardi, in a twenty-minute National Geographic film, GYRE, which aired in 2013.Of Longobardi, Dion says "Her knowledge of the subject and commitment is extraordinary."The artistic outcomes from this expedition were shown first at the GYRE exhibition in Anchorage, Alaska, a major show which later travelled to the CDC's Museum in Atlanta, Georgia. Longobardi's contributions include "Economies of Scale" and "Bounty, Pilfered," both characteristic of her sculptural found-plastic installations.

Longobardi also produces paintings with an"elemental aesthetic," incorporating natural processes such as chemical patinas that also crystallize; light-sensitive photo imaging, magnetism, mirror reflection, after-image, and phosphorescence.

• 2019 Regents Professor, awarded by the Board of Regents for the State of Georgia.
• 2016 Focus Fellowship Award; Special Honorary Mention for Plastic Free Island (short film), Cinemare International Ocean Film Festival, Kiel, Germany; Bronze Award, Short Films Category, Spotlight Film Awards; Artist Residency Fellowship, Ionian Center for Arts and Culture (Kefalonia, Greece)
• 2014 Distinguished University Professor, Georgia State University
• 2014 Artist-in-Residence of the Oceanic Society
• 2013 The Hudgens Prize

• Alaimo, Stacy. 2016. Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Post-Human Times.Univ of Minnesota Press. 138-140,188, Figure 8.
• Baker, Shanna, Hakai Magazine, “New Wave Art,” April 22
• Bellows, Layla, “Plastic Reduction Atlanta Took On the Plastic Straw,” Atlanta Magazine, August
• Borek, Barbara, “Wasser-Kulturen: Die Austellung Bitteres Wasser,” Art in Berlin
• Butler, Jared. 2015. “Hathaway Contemporary Sets the Bar High,”Burnaway
• Breedlove, Byron. 2015. “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach”. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 21(4), 736-737.
• DiFrisco, Emily, “From Bali to Komodo:Documenting Plastic Pollution”, Plastic Free Times
• Eaton, Natasha, International Journal of Maritime History, Book Review, ‘Framing the Ocean’ p. 587-90
• Feaster, Felicia, “Group Show at new gallery Abounds with Interesting Work,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May16
• Grout, Pam, “A Relational Existence: Art as Powerful Voice to Spark Social Change,” ArtDesk 5 (Fall/Winter): 18
• Hansel, Sally, ‘Terrible Beauty: A Conversation with Pam Longobardi,’ Sculpture Magazine, April
• Hawk, Steve, Sierra Magazine, "The Finer Side of Flotsam"
• Jeffery, Celina, “Artists Curate the Expedition,” The Artist As Curator. Chicago: Intellect Books.
• Jeffery, Celina. 2016. “Pam Longobardi: The Ocean Gleaner,” DRAIN Magazine
• Kontra, Ally. 2016. “From Trash to Treasure:Plastic Pollution in the Pacific”
• Meier, Allison, “Artists Confront the Plastic Pollution of Our Ocean,” HYPERALLERGIC, Sept 1
• Ragan, Sheila, “State of the Art is an Unstuffy Contemporary Art Show for All, City Pages, Minneapolis, Feb 19
• Relyea, Laura. 2016. “David Hathaway to Open on the Westside,” ArtsATL, Jan 4 year
• Sentman, Wayne, “Dragons to Debris: An Oceanic Society Expedition to Komodo,”
• Shaw, Kurt, “Art Review: Second Nature at James Gallery,” Pittsburgh Tribune (Oct 7,
• Simons, Tad, LostWknd at Minneapolis Institute of Art [2]
• Valentine, Ben, ‘One Artist’s Quest to Turn Beach Plastic Into Art’, HYPERALLERGIC (Aug 26, 2015) [3]
• Vega, Muriel, “Hathaway David Contemporary Opens with Inaugural Exhibition", Creative Loafing, April 26
• Wagner-Lawlor, Jennifer. 2016. “Regarding Intimacy, Regard, and Transformative Feminist Practice in the Art of Pamela Longobardi,” Feminist Studies 42.3: 649-688
• Webb, Victoria, “Hathaway David Contemporary in Atlanta,” Furious Dreams, [4]