The plastic statement

Both as a writer and an artist, I am drawn to exploring those invisible threads binding the web of humanity together. Underneath any notions of class and race we are each more alike and inter dependent than we realize. In a nuts and bolts, beans and grains way, humanity is intricately connected by factors, such as economy and diet, that we touch upon daily without often giving it the slightest thought.

The simple God-trusting dollar in my pocket anchors the currencies of countless other countries. Should that dollar sicken, the economies of Asia, Africa, much of the world would wretch.

I am corn cob with feet. The carbon constructing my cells has been largely manufactured from sunlight and made edible via miles of corn stalks stretching across the American Midwest. I haven’t eaten corn flakes, grits or corn on the cob in months yet everyday I eat, touch, even wear several derivatives of this miraculous grass.

Now that the genie of globalization has been unleashed there really is no shoving it back into the bottle with blame and public protest. We’re all here on this little space marble with our hands in each other’s pockets and our hope that no one gets hurt. It gives me pause how mindlessly I interact with the rest of the globe through my most unconscious, mundane choices.

My medium of choice has long been watercolor because I loved layering transparent colors. Last year I realized that I wanted some way to make these paintings even lighter – to make the paper disappear and have only the paint itself hanging in space. I was reorganizing my supply closet and came across the plastic resin I used for design projects in graduate school. Pretty soon I was trying to think of ways to make what I normally paint using plastic.

Working in this medium has also allowed me an artistic way to react to my thoughts about globalization. As a modern material it blankets many parts of the world under its effects. Plastic made from one country’s petrochemicals are manufactured into packaging and bags consumed in another. Those of us who do recycle our plastics send them on a long journey to China. However, many plastics, collected but in fact non-recyclable, land in the ocean where churning currents break them down into tiny particles that fish and birds then mistake for food. I could very well end up consuming the plastic again through seafood. Plastic is the fabric of our life and its scraps bring us together as a global village. It is because of this and because the medium really satisfied a desire to work with color in a new way that I have continued to work with it.

This medium requires me to plan much more that painting ever did. And yet, I have to let go of results even more. The process itself demands incredibly fast work and the exothermic curing process can have it’s own way with how the colors blend. But,when it works, the results are addictive and exciting! I have been creating 12 x 12 inch, cast plastic, flat & relief sculptures. I cast objects using alginate or sculpt surfaces in clay and bring these together into a rubber mold to create each square.

The individual pieces are simply impressions, like I’m trying to catch the world in my little plastic net and can only come away with its colors. As I’ve made individual compositions, I have begun seeing these as pieces of a greater whole, like quilt squares. My goal is to bring these together and, in a sense, “sew” together a quilt made of plastic.