Pollution + chemistry = art

It’s a novel formula to turn one of Ohio’s oldest pollutants into something you’d proudly hang on your wall. A partnership of a clever chemist and a determined artist all in an attempt to clean up Ohio’s water.

It starts at a stream in the coal country outside Athens, Ohio, where mining drainage water full of iron and other metals has been turning streams rusty orange, shutting out most aquatic life.

This one stream of 10 in the area is no small source of pollution: 800 to 1,000 gallons of this toxic water enters these streams per minute. This has been going on for the last 50 years and will likely continue for decades.

But one man’s pollution may be another man’s treasure. Collected in jugs by chemist Guy Riefler, this water is taken to his lab at Ohio University. What starts as a dissolved metal in the water is processed until it looks more like a rusty orange powder. At this stage, it is a specific form of iron oxide (rust) that is known to chemists and artists alike as goethite (pronounced gher-tight). 

Riefler’s first try at making the powder was sent to the art studio and — after some attempts at mixing it and painting with it — quickly sent back to the lab. “It was a disaster” said the the collaborating artist, John Sabraw, laughing. “It all broke up. The binder wasn’t right. The crystals were too big, so it kind of ended up being a nice dirt pile.”

But that didn’t stop them from continuing to try to get it right. “Scientists and artists, they share two things … We share curiosity and failure” said Sabraw. Their curiosity drove them to collect more jugs of polluted water, hit the laboratory and try again.

Eventually, they got it right. Sabraw has since created a series called the “Chroma paintings” using this pigment in his paints.

Their goal is to use the paintings to bring attention to this pollution problem that is found throughout old coal country in the Midwest. But they are also thinking big.

Riefler wants to use this paint to allow the cleanup of the river to pay for itself and help employ local residents as well. “The long-term solution is to build a plant on site right here. It would be like a small water treatment plant, and it will treat all the water and continuously produce pigment, and the sale of pigment will pay for the operating the plant,” he said.

Pollution + chemistry = profit.