Arts Blog by Sabra Comins

May 2026

Set in motion by the upcoming installation, The Frimpong Case, I teeter-totter between accumulating and purging.  With my arms full and an empty donation bag at my feet, I find myself clutching a sweatshirt I haven’t worn in years.  I move from room to room in my house, wanting to cull the unused, yet I am unable to dislodge coffee mugs, art stored in boxes, and old running shoes from dusty cupboards and corners.  Am I hard-wired to accumulate?

Vincent Frimpong is a Ghanaian living in the United States who considers how history, culture, and contemporary issues influence what we see before us.  He is a ceramicist and mixed media artist creating work that utilizes elements of his native culture and “the human hand as tool to explore what it means to be an African.”

Frimpong’s exhibition features a large quilted piece made from clothing donated to Ghana from the western world.  Initially I enjoyed imagining Frimpong and his textile medium crossing paths somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.  Now I see this piece titled A Common Hope for Tomorrow accomplishing one of Frimpong’s goals: “To make viewers recognize that what people think they know is not always the whole truth.”

An estimated 15 million articles of used and new clothing arrive in Ghana every week.  These garments come in compressed bundles that people buy in hopes that they contain something sellable.  Many articles are ripped and stained and require cleaning, tailoring, and repurposing in order to be sold.  About one-third are not salvageable.  

To get a sense of the size of 15 million, I applied it to the task of sorting textiles.  At the rate of moving one article of clothing per second, it would take me nearly six months to sort one week’s worth of Ghana’s received donations. 

We share reflections like this in our monthly newsletter. If you’d like to receive them, you can subscribe here. 

This surplus of clothing overflows landfills, spreads along beaches and streets, and perpetuates a lifestyle of low wages and unsafe working conditions.  Long-reaching fibrous networks along the coast contribute to flooding and eventually end up on the ocean floor.  Researchers looking at the effects of this litter refer to these textile tangles as “tentacles.”  I imagine long grasping arms weaving a tightening hold and strangling a shoreline, a culture.

While reading about this system, I recalled the cradle-to-grave legislation I learned in graduate school.  Under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, this legislation requires a record be kept of hazardous waste from the beginning of its life until its end.  While I support the reduction of pollutants in the environment, I was appalled by one allowable disposal method: getting another country to take the pollutant.  When waste crossed the border, one’s accountability for managing it ended regardless of how lax the disposal practices were in that country.

While it’s easier for me to see the underlying greed that drives certain practices today, I still fail to see how we as people allow them to continue to exist.  When challenged to understand a system like this, I sometimes switch the roles of involved players.  What if Oregon received 15 million articles of clothing from Ghana per week?  It is hard to imagine an influx that would top off our landfills and spill over into streets, parks, and beaches.  Maybe we’d build large mounds with names like Donation Peak or Mt. Enough!  Perhaps, we’d strew the unwanted hoodies and jeans along highways in medians and ditches changing our landscape and wildlife pathways. 

As I mentally wrestle with this fibrous mess, I realize that waste management is rooted in a larger problem of consumerism.  Donating my sweatshirt and other discards doesn’t lessen my consumption, but it gives me pause to consider my practice of accumulation and feel the freshly emptied space in my dresser.  A space I could refill experientially by mending with a friend or simply feeling the lightness of having one less thing to wash.   

In honor of the Ghanaians experiencing the burdens of this clothing surplus, my monthly studio project is to extend the life of my wardrobe by mending instead of purchasing.  Following the Japanese style of sewing called sashiko, literally meaning “little stabs,” I will repair clothing with colorful, visible stitching.  I have one pair of pants and two button shirts already lined up for this!  To attend a fiber jam or take a mending, upcycling, or sewing class check out Tarweed Folk School and TAC’s Arts Adventures where opportunities abound to mend and make in community.  A better way to stay dressed!

Happy mending!

Sabra

If this piece resonated with you, we invite you to stay connected through our monthly newsletter.

Explore our past blog posts below.