Trophy Fish

Not long after we met in November 1999, Claudia Chapline asked us to contribute a piece for Re-vision, a show of environmental artworks for the headquarters of the Marin Community Foundation, Larkspur Landing. We had just begun to collect plastic from Kehoe Beach but had not yet forged our collaborative relationship. At that point, we had already gathered a bushel of bottle-caps and lids. With our combined experience arranging objects into forms, it was an easy next step to envision that the bushel of ubiquitous plastic drink caps in saturated colors could become something more. Stacked up concentrically with circles inside of circles, they started to look interesting beyond the individual items. When amassed together, the density of the colors made them seem playful—whimsically generous. Re-contexted in their sheer amount, the lids offered something attractive and on purpose.

Anticipating the exhibit, we visited the beach just to pick up lids and tops, gathering up the plastic with a not quite yet fully formed idea in mind.  We were no longer simply cleaning the beach; we were curating as well as courting, courting the beach or each other? As we began to think about the show, our curiosity developed into a concept, and we decided to make something to celebrate our explorations of the shore. We were grateful to be offered an opportunity to exhibit our work together and after much aesthetic wrangling were pleased to present a trophy fish. Sea, time, fish, our place in history, a show-off piece.

March 27- June 29, 2000, our eight-foot long synthetic Marlin was placed in the main conference room of the Marin Community Foundation, where it became a focal point of the Re-vision exhibition and was used as a backdrop for snapshots to record the gatherings held there. 

We were encouraged by the positive response to our “fish’ so we continued on with the collecting and making and showing. Now ten years hence, we revisit that re-vision and present an updated “Trophy Fish” in where you are... at the new Marin Community Foundation offices at Hamilton, March 22- July 10, 2010.

We are grateful to Claudia Chapline, the Marin Arts Council and the Marin Community Foundation for getting us started. We are grateful to Ellen Campbell, the Marin Arts Council and the Marin Community Foundation for keeping us going.

The Golden Rule

Dear Kraft Foods,

Yesterday on a little half mile of beach we found 18 of your little cheese spreaders from your Kraft Handi-Snak cheese packs. The week before we found 21. And 13 before that. Given the sea-patina and bleaching it’s obvious they have been at sea and not left by pick-nickers. Congratulations! you are having a great year given the empirical evidence we’ve found. Isn’t it time you followed the golden rule now that you have been given the free speech rights of a person granted by the constitution.

Peace and love,

Richard and Judith

“The US Supreme Court has struck down a major portion of a 2002 campaign-finance reform law, saying it violates the free-speech right of corporations to engage in public debate of political issues.” Christian Science Monitor

In the late 1880’s corporations were granted “person-hood” essentially giving them as written in the declaration of Independence…”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Although the progressive movement has railed against this idea of corporate “person-hood” by 2010 this genie is well free of the bottle. It’s a fool’s errand to fight against a wave that has long ago crashed ashore.

What to do?

While I am not a “believer” or a keeper of religious ritual, as an artist I feel myself to be a part of the 30,000-year continuum of humans engaged with the imaginal life. I feel engaged with the essence of human spirituality. Yet, in an age when religious fundamentalism is causing such havoc, it is treading on very thin ice to evoke any kind of religiosity. But, that said….

During the time of Jesus, Rabbi Hillel, when challenged by a gentile, who posed a question, as a taunt, saying, “I will convert, Rabbi, if you can explain your thinking while standing on one leg.” “Easy”, says Hillel, “Do to others as you would have others do to you. All our texts are commentary on that idea, now go and study them.” This simple moral code is the core teaching of all major religions on this planet.

There is no fighting the corporate nature of our global society, but we can insist that if corporations are to enjoy the rights of person-hood, it is time for them to adopt the one true moral compass of existence, “Do to others, what you have them do to you.”

~ Richard Lang

On every visit to Kehoe Beach we have found washed up on the sand these single use plastic spreaders from Kraft Handi-Snak cheese packs. These rectangular pieces of red plastic last hundreds of years in the environment.
Gorgeous Kehoe Beach is located 40 miles north of San Francisco in Point Reyes National Seashore . See Kehoe Beach on BlooSee satellite imagery here.

You can contact Kraft Foods customer service by phone at 1-877-535-5666, or in writing by clicking the happy snack logo. Tell them how happy you are.

On a Day in May

Walking back to the road, we met an anthropologist on the trail heading toward the beach with her little spindly dog. Curious about all the bags and stuff we were dragging, she tells us she about her anthropologizing which she does for an eco-company in Sacramento. They do contract work for developers. When Native American shell mounds, burial remains and various artifacts, are uncovered in digging, California law stipulates any pre-European finds need to be investigated. We want to show her our artifacts, digging in our pockets for some of the champion things we've found today. Amazing day really, this late in the season—usually by this time of year, the California Current has returned, sweeping the beach pretty much clear. But we've found loads of things that are really top-notch for our treasure trove. Strangely, we loaded up with a couple dozen plastic drink bottles—all from Asia. We've never seen so many before from Asia, typically they are the water and soft drink bottles bought by the case at Costco.

We found (Judith found) four soldiers and a very sea-worn palm size Godzilla. Rare even in the high season, this many little figures. But best of all, Judith found a doll's hand with the two middle fingers pressed against the palm, index and pinky raised like horns, metal band style. The anthropologist brightens at the weird context, and something tiny laden with so much meaning. Heavy Metal baby doll? The horns of Satan? We comment - devil is indeed at work spoiling the world with his plastic crapulosity.

At home we do the usual web search and find the rock-n-roll sign but the thumb is holding down the two middle fingers. This little pudgy hand has the thumb out hitchhiker style. Oh! Of course it’s the sign-language hand gesture for I love you and we find a doll called the “Richard” with that very same hand gesture. Oh, sweet. But truly the day was sweet, finding amazing things for our project and best of all high on the sandstone cliff we saw the telltale white wash of a raptor's nest. And lucky us, a birder set up an excellent spotting scope so we could peer right into the nest,which she invited us to do. There were four baby Peregrines almost fledged out, puffs of down poking our under the flight feathers, like they'd put their cloths on over their PJ's. And double bonus, the swallows have come back. I'd been fretting for two weeks at their tardy return, thinking another loss was going to break my heart, but there they are, in droves. Lucky little love hand pointing the direction on a day in May.

This red piece is a small part of a much larger story- click here to read all about it. Amazing that eight years later this fragment just washed up.

To view the Nest Cam of Peregrines in San Francisco- click here

Naming the Floats

Boat Brand fishing float. We have some fifty in our collection. A three-masted schooner sailing a sea above the "trade mark" sign. Why are they are the same salmon-y-pink color as the parts of Barbie and Kens we find? Who knows? 

The "Lucky Brand" floats, which we also find, are a pale beige. Lucky Brand has a circle logo with the image of two fish, Pisces-horoscope style, swimming above and below one another. Now, just who decided what the things were going to be called? Is it wishful thinking? 

Fisherman are a superstitious lot. There is some science to it all, and a good fisherman tries for the repeatability of science, but a friend of ours who worked for the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department of the World Bank told us a story of trying to introduce a little science to Malaysian fisherman. They scoffed—if Allah wants us to catch fish, we will catch fish. We pray to Allah for fish.

Bryozoans

Looks like this little fella is from the Wehrmacht given his helmet and the rest of the kit he’s toting. Poised, ready to shoot, a cog in Der Fürer’s army. He’s been out there at sea a long long time, finally coming to rest on Kehoe Beach, home from the war. He’s sporting mineralized skeletons of Bryozoans. 

Bryozoans have a varied gendered life cycle and body parts that show that they are the level of complexity of earthworms. They make colonies, distinctive little homes for themselves and are a sure tell that a piece of plastic has been at sea a long time.

Our little Wehrmacht Soldat reminds us that great armies rise and fall, but plastic is forever.

Pink

What’re the chances?

It doesn’t take but a speck of red to turn bright white paint rosy. You discover that pretty quickly when you set about to learn to paint—pink, the girly color. It’s light red. So specific. There are names for light blue—baby blue, light brown—tan, light black—grey, but there’s nothing like pink to embrace the territory of the feminine. It’s like no other color. You think pink and you think girl.

It didn’t register when I picked up the pink pirate out of the chaos of beach debris but it did go in the pocket of the hiking vest where I stash special things, lighters, hair clips, bottle caps with Asian writing, toy soldiers. It wasn’t 'til I got to doing a high rez picture of the little guy that I thought ….pink pirate? Where would he fit in some kid’s fantasy play life? Pink Pirate….

Maybe when they were mixing up a batch of white some red got in? Maybe he got bleached? The high rez image shows he’d been chewed on and spit out, the tooth gashes show he’s pink all they way through. Not bleached. The World Wide Web may have a clue, anyway its fun to be sleuthing about.

Five minutes of www. And I find Classic Toy Soldiers "No batteries required . . . powered by imagination." A company not too far from Kansas City, MO but in Kansas. CTS as they call themselves. Yes, they had my little guy for sale in a pirate kit with five figures and accessories (cutlasses, a jolly roger, a treasure chest…) colors vary, vintage MPC (Multiple Plastic Corporation no longer in business) $23.00. The set shown is brown, black and red. Very not pink. Google to “Pink Pirate” and I get Pink Pirate Sword, $12.99 from Kohl’s which must be an accessory to the “Pink Pirate Dancer Adult Plus Size” $49.99.

I talk to my daughter Amelia to get her thoughts. Pink Pirate? “Well, it’s both good and bad. Soft risky. Do you remember my six-year-old Halloween costume?” “What do you want to be this year?” “A bat”—her little hands up as claws, “rrrrrrrrawwwwww! I want to be a bat, a pink bat.” We made her the pink bat costume. What are the chances? But two days later I find a pink bat at Kehoe Beach.

--Richard

Oil Truck

About halfway down the north side of Kehoe Beach, the buckskin colored cliffs of Laird Sandstone rise directly out of the beach. The formation is named for the Laird Brothers who dairied there in the 19th century. Kehoe is a favorite geology class field trip destination with its dramatic and easily definable formations. Geology teachers we have talked to at Kehoe tell us the Laird formation was laid down in the Miocene in shallow water flood plains and relatively quickly, so the rock is soft as a result. "I was here" graffiti scratched into the rock face is commonplace. Granite beds lace the formation giving a hold for the sandstone and you can easily find fossils of barnacles and oysters. Because the cliffs are perpendicular to the beach, wind shapes a dune 10 feet away. There is a quiet space out of the weather and it's a good place to find plastic washed up long ago. There is a kind of churning effect that unearths the long buried.

Digging into the sand, Judith found a green truck, the remains fairly intact but missing wheels and crusted with crude oil in places. It’s been long in the elements but still pretty well recognizable. In a book from the local library about plastic toys, there's the exact thing. Turns out it was a gas truck made by the Ideal Toy Company sometime between 1946 and 1949. Plastic Toys: Dimestore Dreams of the 40s & 50s. Here it is sixty years later—plastic is forever.