Plastically Possible in Chiang Mai

 Art Transforms Waste!

Exciting news just in from the zoo in Chiang Mai—the first Plastically Possible Student Art Challenge is happening!

From California we are shouting, Hurrrrrrrrah for Plastically Possible and the power of art to energize young people and spark important conversations!

A huge congratulations to Doug Woodring and the team at Ocean Recovery Alliance in Hong Kong. Doug had a visionary idea and brought it to fruition.

And kudos to everyone who made this event possible—the zoo, the teachers, the schools, the organizers, and especially the students.

One brilliant addition was giving each team three minutes to tell the story of the animal they represented. That simple idea transformed the exhibition into a rich, multi-faceted experience—combining research, creativity, writing, public speaking, and environmental advocacy.

Nothing is more inspiring than seeing the seriousness, imagination, and devotion these young people bring to their projects. Their artworks demonstrate that creativity can transform waste into beauty while inspiring action to protect wildlife and our planet.

Congratulations to all the winners and participants. This is exactly how change begins—with ideas, art, and young people leading the way.

The post on Facebook

You can view the original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwSXRY67GD0

Here is the English translation of the audio from the video, which covers a creative art contest in Chiang Mai using plastic waste:

[00:00] Host 1: "Viewers, currently the issue of plastic waste is truly overwhelming. Aside from taking plastic to be recycled, another thing we can do is use it to create imaginative artworks. Let's go take a look at how it turned out."

[00:24] Host 2: "What do you think, viewers? To be honest, they are very beautiful. Children possess a lot of creativity; whatever they pick up, they can transform into something creative."

[00:33] Host 1: "All of this is plastic waste. These are the works of elementary and secondary school students right here in Chiang Mai Province. They took this plastic waste and transformed it into beautiful pieces of art. For instance, they used bottle caps of various colors to make the centers of flowers, as well as shapes of crabs and a wide variety of marine animals.

[00:56] They took multi-colored pieces of plastic, arranged them, and pasted them onto paper, completely based on the kids' own ideas of what shapes they wanted to make.

[01:05] This activity is a collaboration between the Chiang Mai Zoo and educational and environmental networks. They want to raise awareness about environmental issues and the impacts of plastic waste on wildlife and the ecosystem, so they organized this plastic art contest. There were 11 schools interested in joining the competition, submitting a total of 21 pieces.

[01:29] For the elementary school category, the first prize winner was Khan Suwan Anusorn School. For the secondary school category, the winner was Chongfah Sinsei Wanish Bamrung School.

[01:44] Now, viewers, all the winning and participating artworks are currently being exhibited for the public and tourists to view right here at the Chiang Mai Zoo Aquarium. If anyone is in Chiang Mai, you can easily go check it out to admire the creativity of our youth and to gain inspiration to reduce plastic waste and take better care of our environment."

Ryoanji Rocked

The old adage goes:

"Measure once, cut twice... and it's still too short!"

It's a humorous reminder that hasty, careless, or impulsive actions—especially those involving irreversible decisions—often lead to wasted effort, squandered resources, and work that must be redone.

Knowing that I would be installing at the Japan Foundation in Los Angeles, a small section of Recycle Ryoanji. required months of planning.The original installation at City Hall in San Francisco measured 18 feet by 44 feet and contained fifteen "rocks" composed of black plastic collected from Kehoe Beach. For Los Angeles, the work had to be thoughtfully reimagined and resized to approximately 8 feet by 13 feet, with just five rocks. Every dimension, proportion, tool, material, and supply had to be carefully considered and packed. There would be no quick trips to the hardware store once the installation began.

Fortunately, all the measuring, planning, and preparation paid off. The installation proceeded without a hitch, proving that careful preparation is often the invisible foundation of success.

I am deeply grateful to Aldo Schwartz, tea ceremony practitioner, who invited me to participate in the exhibition Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics; UCLA Professor Dr. Michelle Liu Carriger, whose guidance and vision helped shape the project and support the students involved; and Kaoru Kuribayashi, Arts and Culture Program Coordinator at the Japan Foundation Los Angeles, who works to bridge traditional Japanese culture with contemporary art. Follow on Instagram. 

Aldo,   Michelle,   Judith,   Richard

It was especially rewarding to see this new iteration of Recycle Ryoanji situated adjacent to the inspiring Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastic upcycled tea room (chashitsu).

Founded in 2022 by a collective of UCLA students and faculty, Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastic explores sustainability and ocean plastic pollution through the cultural practice of chanoyu, commonly known as the Japanese tea ceremony. Over the past three years, the group has collaborated with artists, designers, engineers, craftspeople, scholars, and cultural practitioners across California, Boston, and Japan. Together they have constructed a tea house from salvaged and recycled materials and created tea-inspired performances that investigate sustainability, local histories, and trans-Pacific cultural exchange.

This summer's exhibition features ocean-inspired tea utensils (dōgu) created by the collective and their collaborators. Since the adjacent shelves displayed their functional tea tools, I curated a complementary installation on the lowest shelf. A series of plates featured useful objects that had washed ashore—items of labor and utility rather than beach toys—highlighting another dimension of our relationship with the ocean and its debris.

Straws, Caps, Cutlery, Tiparillo Tips, Shotgun Wads, Disposable Lighters, Spice Lids

One particularly meaningful contribution was staged in the corner where the shelving wall meets the tokonoma wall. Michelle suggested incorporating a chiri-ana, a symbolic refuse pit that typically contains a few broken twigs, some leaves, and bamboo chopsticks placed by the host or hostess as a sign of having cleaned the garden. In this context, the gesture became especially poignant, evoking the seemingly endless accumulation of plastic we are now struggling to clean up from our beaches, waterways, and oceans.

Along the rear window wall hung four panels from Black Gold, Texas Tea, expressing the petroleum=plastic equation and the environmental consequences of our dependence on fossil fuels. 

Another idea was inspired by a familiar tea ceremony custom. To maintain cleanliness and show respect for the space, visitors remove their shoes before entering the tea house. Nearby, I displayed a collection of shoes that had washed ashore on to Kehoe Beach. Each had arrived alone, carried by tides and currents. Not one was found with its mate. Together they served as a quiet reminder of the countless journeys and stories embedded in the objects we discard.

Thanks to Richard for suggesting this lineup

Finally, none of this would have been possible without the love and encouragement of my husband and my One Beach Plastic artistic partner, Richard Lang, and the unwavering support of our family.

Paul, Richard, Judith, Amelia, Janis, Greg, Louise!!!

LOUISE!!!

On June 18, Recycle Ryoanji truly rocked. The dual opening for Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastic and Kinetic Stillness brought together a lively crowd of artists, students, environmentalists, tea practitioners, and art enthusiasts. Conversations flowed throughout the galleries as visitors moved between the installations, discovering unexpected connections between contemporary environmental concerns, traditional Japanese aesthetics, and the transformative possibilities of art.

For that evening, the garden, the tea house, and the collected debris of our consumer culture seemed to speak with one another—and the crowd enthusiastically joined in. Those conversations are exactly what I had hoped the work would inspire.

Listen to the cacophony of the crowd of art enthusiasts enjoying the festivities.

YOUTUBE.COM

KINETIC STILLNESS OPENING RECEPTION | THE JAPAN FOUNDATION LOS ANGELES

Through September 19

and beyond — Let's keep the conversations going.

https://www.jflalc.org/event-details.php/361/tea-ceremony-with-pacific-plastics

• HoursMon-Fri: 12-6pm, Sat: 10am-3pm, Closed on Sundays and Holidays (June 19, July 3, 4, 20, August 11, and September 7)
• Venue5700 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 100 Los Angeles, CA 90036

Japan Foundation

For more information: Tea Ceremony with Pacific Plastics Japan Foundation Los Angeles 

 

WOODLAKE APARTMENTS

We are pleased to announce that our beach plastic prints will enhance the public spaces in the new Luxury Affordable Housing Woodlake Apartments in Woodland Hills, CA. Residents will enjoy a variety of amenities inside the apartment homes and throughout out the community with a well-rounded living experience that will support work, relaxation, and connection.

Words from Greg Comanor, the developer:

Woodlake Family Apartments is a 100-unit, 100% affordable housing development in the Woodland Hills neighborhood in Los Angeles. The development offers 74 units of family affordable housing and 25 units of supportive housing. The development is built into a 35-foot hillside, required 18,000 cubic yards of dirt removal,  and was built with 5 levels of Type III construction over 3 Levels of Type I construction. The development was designed by FSY Architects and was built by Dreyfuss Builders. 

Woodlake includes a variety of tenant amenities, including several community rooms, two children's play areas, case management offices, a gaming room, landscaped patios, and a recharging view of the West Valley.

Although it has been a long time in coming with a maze of permits and construction challenges, moving-in begins June 25.

And for us, it has also been a long time in coming from collecting plastic from Kehoe Beach, to photography, printing and signing at Electric Works in San Francisco, and to the installation of our prints in Los Angeles.

We are happy to join forces with family to address the pressing need for low-cost housing: 

Greg Comanor, developer

Amelia Lang, curator

Noah and Kris Lang, Electric Works, imager/printer                                                     

Richard and Judith Lang, artists

2026 California Ocean Day

This Positive News story about wild swimming is a great example of how engagement with the natural world can prompt environmental action.

Surfrider Foundation is another group of avid ocean advocates. Not only is their organization powered by surfers, there are also hundreds of other non-surfing volunteers who support their initiatives, including my sister, Janis Jones, who serves as co-lead for the San Diego Chapter Rise Above Plastics committee .

Ocean lovers will be in Sacramento this week for California Ocean Day, April 28. With so many initiatives for law makers to consider, I took the time to write to my representatives, to express my concerns and encourage their support for these  ocean protection issues.

AB 1536 is an effort to increase oil pipeline safety and would change state law to significantly tighten oversight and safety requirements for aging and high-risk existing oil pipelines near California's coast, particularly those that have already spilled.

Always interested in crafting an appropriate response, with something to wear that fits the occasion, I created a "Never Forget" necklace that addresses the devastating effects of offshore oil drilling. 

Earthrise 1968 by Bill Anders, the image of the blue marble floating in the black void, was a powerful wakeup call to the citizens of planet Earth. In February 1969, photographs of the oil-soaked birds from the Santa Barbara oil spill were the heartbreaking evidence of the impact of humans on planet Earth. The synergy of those two images became a motivating example of the role what artists as image-makers can play.

Unfortunately, since Santa Barbara, there have been many oil catastrophes that have affected hundreds of thousands of birds and animals, underscoring the need for action. 

This necklace stands as a reminder and declaration of commitment to never forget 

the lasting environmental consequences of these disasters.

Just as I was wrapping up this post, I learned that Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed today as California Ocean Day. Read all about it HERE.