TODD COOPER
Second Chances
BRING chapel recycles marriage vows
BY ANDREW HITZ
ugene has its fair share of hippie-
fueled amazingness, from The Kiva
to the Oregon Country Fair — and
now BRING Recycling Center’s Chapel of
Second Chances, which might be the most
cohesively “Eugene” thing of all.
The chapel, which was erected in
BRING’s Garden of Earthly Delights
between September 2009 and last summer,
is the long-lasting project of local artist
Jud Turner. Turner’s use of recycled and
E
found objects in his sculptures caught the
attention of BRING directors, who initially
recruited him to appropriate commissions.
However, Turner soon expressed his desire
to sculpt for the Garden. He found himself
with the task of constructing a backdrop
sculpture for the chapel and took to it with
found materials from BRING’s market.
Turner’s sculpture draws on many
important aspects of modern society.
Religious solidarity, sustainability and
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personal relationship are all themes
integrated as part of the whole. The chapel,
which has been designated exclusively
for vow renewal or “recycling,” sits in the
middle of a recycling center. Not a regular
venue for events of this type, sure, but
there’s more to it. The environmental
narrative serves as a motif for renewal
and rebirth — concepts that mesh with
reaffi rming one’s values and love for
another.
“This is the Chapel of Second Chances,”
says Turner. “It’s not just that you’re
renewing your wedding vows; it’s that
recycling is really the second chance of
humanity to avoid catastrophic damage to
the Earth.”
The chapel, which won’t be open to the
public until late spring or early summer, has
already hosted vow renevals for a few close
friends of BRING. Turner’s parents were one
of those couples. After Anne Turner lost
her wedding band, she and her husband,
Jack, used the chapel, which they had been
viewing since its groundbreaking, to reaffi rm
their vows after 42 years of marriage. For
them, their son’s ecumenical integration of
multiple world religious symbols into the
sculpture lent a welcoming, inclusive feel to
the ceremony.
“I’m not a Catholic, so if I go into a
Catholic church, I feel like a stranger
there and cannot be included in all things
Catholic,” says Jack. “That’s true for pretty
much any religion. Unless you join them,
you’re not really one of them. One of the
things Jud was trying to do with the art
on the wall was to be inclusive. So you
belong there whether you’re an atheist
or whatever the other extreme is. And it
works!”
The sculptural backdrop of the chapel,
which is harnessed to a concrete supporting
wall, displays the imagery of at least 12
different world religions and symbols of
atheists and pagans. Turner wanted to
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Save the Date!
January 8 & 9, 2010
Lane Events Center - Eugene
For more on the Chapel of Second Chances, contact
BRING at 746-3023 or www.bringrecycling.org
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toy with the idea that a chapel has a very
implied Western religious connotation, and
he also wanted to expand that meaning
to a broader range of spiritual practices.
Finally, the artist wanted to incorporate the
fact that almost every religious tradition
holds to some aspect of environmental
conservation.
“Yes, there is this catastrophic situation
that we have all created through our
different modes of consumption and
selfi shness,” Turner says, “and we have
this limited chance to rally together and do
something about it — and one way we can
do that is by just embracing our different
faith traditions and the element that says
‘Take care of the Earth’.”
Tita and Mark Evans-Santini, who are
also close with the BRING family, “recycled”
their vows after 30 years of marriage in
Eugene. Just as a found object’s identity
is re-appropriated or a glass bottle is
reconstituted as sand then new glass, they
found recycling vows at BRING to be like
rediscovering and reaffi rming each other’s
values and individual development. Mark,
a recycling junkie, says, “We renewed [our
vows] or we recycled them in the sense
that we’ve gone through a certain cycle
of our vows and we’re going to recycle, go
back to the early stages and renew those.”
Traveling around the world has
garnered them a realistic perspective of
the world’s environmental crisis and lack
of consciousness. “It’s recycling utopia in a
way,” Tita says of Eugene and Oregon, “and
we forget that the majority of the world is
not that way.”
Turner’s art expresses a message that
might be better placed in an industrial
complex or a decapitated rainforest. But
here it serves as a testament to our ethos,
our inclusion and our amazing local artists.
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Show Hours: Sat. 10-5 & Sun. 11-4:30 • Admission $8
SUN-SAT 9am-8pm
discounts at eu.oregonweddingshowcase.com
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