Mnemba Nurdles at the Bay Model

We went to Mnemba Island, off the north-eastern tip of Zanzibar in the azure Indian Ocean, for a vacation from detritus. We wanted to enjoy being at the beach without the obsession of picking things up. But, even on this remote island, to our great dismay, we found plastic trash and bright cobalt blue nurdles. Our first morning out we gathered enough to send to Dr. Hideshige for sample analysis.
International Pellet Watch

In Africa, single use single use plastic water bottles are the primary way that potable water is served. The caps of the water bottles are bright cobalt blue and the bottles are extruded translucent blue.

And, they are everywhere.

Back in our studio, we arranged the nurdles on Mnemba sand. The nurdle photographs were accomplished at Electric Works, San Francisco using a Phase One 4X5 digital camera, printed with archival pigment inks on Moab Entrada paper then face mounted on acrylic.

The nurdle prints are now on display in KNOWN QUANTITY our show at the Bay Model in San Francisco until June 21. There is will be no reception but there are many hours when the model and our exhibition is open. How to get there:

http://www.spn.usace.army.mil/bmvc/bmjourney/community/directions.html

Rising Tide at Stanford University

In order to demonstrate the ubiquity of plastic waste in our oceans, we have categorized our collection of plastic by type.

Beauty First has become our creed. By exciting the aesthetic sensibility, we hope to rouse a call to action.

Necklaces

Necklaces

Necklaces

Most plastic packaging is called “disposable” from “disposable” food containers, “disposable” lighters, but we know that everything disposable goes some where and that some where is for a long, long time.

By giving aesthetic form to what is considered to be garbage, I serve as both cleaner and curator. While the content of my work has a message about the spoiling of the natural world by the human/industrial world, my intent is to transform the perils of pollution into something beautiful and celebratory.

These necklaces were made from plastic collected from Kehoe Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Irresponsible visitors did not leave this plastic on the beach; rather it washed up from the ocean. Some pieces show evidence of being at sea a long time, roughed and tumbled by the salt and the waves. Some have identifying markers indicating that it traveled far, from Korea or Japan.

I hope by putting a little fun and fashion into the conservation conversation, that the value of detritus will increase. Soon everyone will be out at the beach “shopping” for a special piece of plastic trash or will be eager to “mine” the North Pacific Gyre for plastic treasures. Then, we get some great things to wear and to look at, plus we get a clean and healthy sea.

Milk Tab Bracelet

When I was growing up, milk came in clear glass bottles delivered early morning to our doorstep. Years later, we bought milk at the store in a boxy wax carton with a fold open spout. Now, in the name of sanitation and convenience, milk cartons have been “improved” with plastic safety milk pull-tabs. Now, thousands of these ubiquitous tabs are making their way to the landfill. It will take thousands of years for them to decompose and go away.

To draw attention to this blight, I created a bracelet by looping one loop inside the other and on around until the final one loops into the first one. People always take note of my unique jewelry, which allows me to talk about plastic and encourage action about everything, even about milk cartons.

During a recent trip to Tanzania, I visited a Masai village where the inquisitive fingers of an elder Masai woman touched my bright white bracelet trying to figure out what could be the source and the material of my unusual adornment. I asked our guide to explain that I had made the bracelet out of milk pull-tabs; that they were something that would otherwise be thrown away; and that I am an artist who uses recycled plastic in my creations. I was babbling so fast that probably neither she nor my translator understood a word of what I was saying.

When she expressed interest in my bracelet I was thrilled. She is also an expert craftsperson who makes elaborate bracelets and neck collars. With mutual respect as artisans, we made an exchange. I now wear one of her fine beaded bracelets and she now wears my milk-tab bracelet. 

I imagine that when I am telling this story about my amazing experience with the elder Masai woman — she is telling someone about the crazy white woman who came into the village telling stories about recycling plastic? and milk cartons? I have to laugh, they subsist milk and blood from cows, might have never even seen a milk carton — so I was indeed crazy-talkin’.

In a gesture of appreciation of art and adornment, the Masai woman and I connected. ART held the moment — through beauty, we were able to speak when language just wouldn’t do.

NURDLES - the mermaid's tears

         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