MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — For most of his adult life, artist and world-renowned environmentalist John Sabraw has made perspective-bending and illusionist art bridging the gap between realism and imagination.  

A professor at the Ohio University School of Art in Athens, Ohio, for the past several years, Sabraw has felt called to action by the number of pollutants in Ohio’s rivers resulting from acid seepage from abandoned coal mines. 

After several years of planning, collaboration with scientists and environmental engineers, and garnering support to clean up the tainted waterways, this week Sabraw travelled to GC’s Arts and Sciences Auditorium to share a revolutionary plan to decontaminate the area’s rivers.

“I’m a transplant to Ohio, and I had already been there for a couple years when I asked why all their rivers were a terrible, ugly shade of red,” he said at the GC Office of Sustainability’s annual symposium Thursday. “They started talking to me about coal mining and how for the last couple hundred years, there has been surface mining and pillar mining throughout Southeast Ohio. Until the [federal] Clean Water Act of 1972, they actually were just abandoning these things … water gets into these mines, and there are sulfides in the mines in Appalachia, which creates sulfuric acid and extracts heavy metals — primarily iron oxide — from inside. Some of these seeps we’re looking at produce a million gallons (of tainted water) a day.”

Taken aback at the sheer scale of contamination in the region’s rivers, but unsure of ways he could address the problem, Sabraw pondered the issue until he one day met an OU engineering professor named Guy Reifler. When Reifler shared Sabraw’s concern for the region’s rivers and told him about his plans to turn iron oxide sludge into artist-quality pigment.  Sabraw offered his help in the project, and a unique blend of art and environmental science was born.

“I got approached by someone who said there was a person trying to make pigments out of [the pollutants], and I said ‘That’s my idea’,” recounted Sabraw. “I went to meet [Reifler], and he said he was trying to make pigment out of it but needed an artist because the pigment looked ugly. His idea is revolutionary in that we can create a pigment that is valuable enough to sell, and the funds from it will go to pay for a plant, the employees of the plant, and the cleanup of the river.”

After first conceiving the notion in 2010, the two professors are now in the final stages of designing a plant that would draw polluted water from a stream in Corning, Ohio, extract iron oxide and other harmful chemicals, and dump clean water back into the stream. Sabraw said the finished plant will have instantaneous effects on the river ecosystem by removing toxins and balancing the water’s acidity level while providing jobs to economically depressed former mining communities, all funded by the sale of the iron oxide paint. In recent months, the team’s project has garnered interest from Smithsonian Magazine, the Washington Post, and CNN, and has even earned the professors an audience with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Although the team requires much more funding to build a plant that could clean a major waterway, Sabraw’s hope is that more people will see the value in the project and draw more attention and funds to their cause.

“I have to say, I’m feeling really optimistic,” he said after the conclusion of his talk Thursday. “I really feel right now like we’re going to be successful, but there are a lot of components that still have to come into play. From years of hoping that something would work and hoping we could get to that place, we’re this close.”

Among several dozen students, faculty, and community members at Thursday’s symposium, one of those most interested in Sabraw’s presentation was GC Office of Sustainability Events Coordinator Julia Steele. Having spearheaded the effort to book Sabraw using student sustainability fees in her capacity with GC’s Sustainability Fee Council, Steele spent a large part of the week shuttling Sabraw around campus for various meetings and community art pieces. After most attendees had left the auditorium at the conclusion of Thursday’s talk, Steele said Sabraw’s work aligns closely with GC’s liberal arts mission.

“I don’t know how many students were there today, but I saw a lot of environmental science majors, a lot of art majors, a chemistry major, psychology, and sociology,” said Steele. “With Georgia College being a liberal arts school, our theme is that we want to let students learn not just biology or nursing, but about a lot of different subjects.”

For more information or to donate to OU’s river reclamation project, visit Sabraw’s website at http://www.johnsabraw.com/.