In a telescopic to microscopic series of images, we present the near invisible story of nurdles, a particularly noxious component of the plastic flotsam. Nurdles are sometimes referred to by their more poetic name, “mermaid’s tears.”
Nurdles are almost impossible to see until one learns what they are and how to differentiate them from a grain of sand or a fish egg. Once known, one sees numbers of them scattered across the sand. Nurdles are the raw plastic material that is shipped to manufacturers of bottles, car parts, toys, almost anything made of plastic. The real danger with nurdles is their absorptive capability. They are tiny magnets for metabolites, PCB's, breakdown products of DDT—DDE and other dioxin-like substances. They are poisonous little bombs loaded with tens of 1000's of times more poison than the ambient sea, and because they are translucent they are mistaken for fish eggs, they enter the food chain.
We intend with this exposition to make big what we don’t see; to focus on our indiscriminate use of plastics. We are mining fossil hydrocarbons for heating our houses and workplaces, for driving our planes and trains and automobiles, and yet, we only vaguely understand that we are using much of the irreplaceable primordial remnants of Carboniferous fern bogs, laid down 300,000,000 million years ago, to make plastic that we so blithely toss away.
Our work reflects our long held views about the purposes of art. Art can be beautiful and challenging. Art can be political without being polemical. We do what artists always do; reframe the context. Make something horrible beautiful, the "terrible beauty" Yeats speaks of. And, do it with all the joie de vivre artists can muster. Make it beautiful. For, after all, why try to help reshape the human tribe at all? Once we realize, not just know, but once we realize, what we have been given, it's time to celebrate.
Bolinas Museum, 2008, Bolinas, CA
