A fixture of Boston’s vibrant local artists’ community, Evelyn Rydz (b. 1979) is known for exploring America’s coasts and carefully observing the remnants of modern life that wash up on the shoreline. An alumna of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA), Rydz was awarded the School’s prestigious Traveling Fellowship in 2012, which brought her to Hawaii, where she was struck by the foreignness of the landscape of Kamilo Beach––an area covered by an accumulation of garbage from the world’s oceans.

She created new works, including drawings and photographs, for the exhibition, “Evelyn Rydz: Forever Yours,” on view in the Eunice and Julian Cohen Galleria. Her works depict colorful plastic particles that drifted from dumping sites around the world to occupy 90 percent of the beach’s shoreline––reaching depths of up to 10 feet. Rydz traversed unpaved roads to reach the site, where she collected countless plastic samples for the works on view in the exhibition.