Artistic inspiration is often found in unlikely places.

For New York City artist Erin Treacy, it was in quite a unique place: the bag full of compost sitting in her freezer.

“The city has a composting program, but I also have to worry rodents and bugs,” said Treacy, 38. “So I started freezing it, which is something a lot of people do. I kept a bag in the freezer and once it was full, I’d take it out to the bin.”

One day, Treacy took the bag out, “and I realized, this is kind of a beautiful frozen sculpture.”

She took some photos and began sketching them, which led to “Reciprocal Relationships,” a series of pieces currently on exhibit through Friday, Sept. 25 at the Boxheart Gallery in Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield neighborhood.

“Erin was originally in one of our group jury shows, ‘The Art International,’ back in 2008,” said Boxheart Gallery owner Nicole Capozzi. “She won that show and became our 2009 Artist of the Year.”

This will be Treacy’s third exhibition at the Boxheart, and she said working with the compost as a subject got her thinking about the process of time.

“It’s literally frozen on the table, and as you draw, you see it begin to melt and fall, you start to see the decay,” she said. Once the coronavirus quarantine was in full effect, Treacy found herself spending much more time at home — and thus with the compost.

“I started looking at them as their own landscapes,” she said. “They were these little fictional landscapes I was able to explore.”

Capozzi said the theme of Treacy’s latest exhibition ties in with with her other works.

“She’s doing it all through an understanding of time and the patterns that connect the landscape to our own human experience,” Capozzi said. “That has stayed pretty consistent in her work.”

Looking at some of the works in the exhibition, they almost seem like abstract still life portraits.

But as one looks closer, the edges begin to fray and it becomes easier to see the slurry of jumbled food scraps in “Fingers Scrapped the Landscape.” Meanwhile, “The Suns and The Moons” incorporates what appears to be lime halves, discarded chili peppers, a strawberry and other veggie scraps into a melange of color that draws the eye in multiple directions at once.

“She does a great job exploring abstraction through the use of lines, drawing and sculpting,” Capozzi said. “She’s able to merge her talents using all kinds of media and materials.”

Boxheart Gallery is at 4523 Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield.

For more on Treacy, see ErinTreacy.com.

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