The Beauty in Single Use Plastics

One of the things I love most about working with reclaimed single-use plastic trash is that, in its own weird way, it’s beautiful.

That may sound nuts, but this stuff is all designed by someone to attract our attention. The bright colors, the fun patterns - all are intended to get our attention in a crowded store.

And I gotta say, they work.

I first started collecting plastic bottle caps because they couldn’t be recycled curbside, and they just looked like they ought to be good for something. And those bright dabs of color looked a lot like dots of paint . . . not surprising since modern acrylic paints are, well, plastic.

Next, I dove into plastic bags and food packaging – I had read an article about fusing plastics to make a kind of material, and I was excited to try it! Besides, there had to be something I could do with all of those frozen burrito wrappers my boyfriend was producing . . .

A lot of the fun for me has been figuring out ways to use these materials in a way that really brings out their beauty!

Thanks to a RACC Project Grant and Cheryl over at Create Plenty, I'll be headed into Trillium Charter High School on February 27th to share the beauty (and the dangers) of single-use plastics with two classes of Earth Sciences students.

We're still in the last phases of fundraising for the project, and you can find the plastic quilt pictured above, "Bird on a Wire" for sale here, at the Create Plenty website.

Crafty Ideas from Anthropologie: Spring!

I've been doing a lot of tidying around here. Spring cleaning, almost. I finally got my hard drive backed up, and I've spent the better part of two days of washing plastic bottle caps in preparation for some new projects. Thanks to the awesome folks at MacForce, I was also finally able to get a bunch of photos off of my iPhone and into my computer!

So how does this all connect? Some of the pictures were of the latest window display at Anthropologie, and they're very much inspiring some of my new work with reclaimed materials. Anthropologie has wonderful window displays - and they often feature recycled materials. I snapped these just a few weeks ago, and this time around they've used cut up plastic bottles to create Spring-inducing flower arrangements.



Check out the bicycle on display with flowers in the spokes! It looks like the designer may have used pastel or white spray paint to bring out the pastel colors . . .

More fun with Plastic . . .

Once again, I'm throwing myself out there and making more stuff out of reclaimed plastic. I joined up with the latest episode of Leave No Plastic Behind's art challenge, and have been saving large swathes of the plastics I consume . . . plastic bags, plastic bottle caps, bags from frozen foods, straws, lids, clamshells, candy wrappers, tub lids . . . fact is, I produce a lot more plastic than I ever thought I did.

The challenge, of course, is two-fold: one, to make art from the plastics and two, to change your habits so you don't use as much plastic. Let's just say I'm doing really well on the first, and struggling with the second . . .

I found this great tutorial on Etsy for fusing plastic bags. I had plastic bags from my trip to Mexico last year, from frozen veggies, from the Food Day newspaper that gets delivered whether I want it or not . . . So I fused them (with good ventilation, of course) and created squares . . . which I stitched up into this cool quilt square!


Of course, I'm still working with my first love in the world of reclaimed plastics, plastic bottle caps. I made another chandelier, this one for Tribute Gallery in NW Portland:






And, thanks to some friends, I've discovered more artists and creative folks out there making great stuff out of reclaimed plastics . . .


This amazing image of a curtain made of plastic bottlecaps was sent to me by Alea over at Bonewerx - to see more, check out the Dutch wiki the images came from!

And then there's this installation at Rice University by Aurora Robson (photo by Nash Baker) called "The Great Indoors" made entirely of reclaimed plastics . . .those dark curly lines? All bottlecaps!!

Bottle Cap Art Round-Up!

Installations

Last week, my dear friend Leslie pointed me to another Portland, OR artist who's working with plastic bottle caps - and doing installations to boot. His name is Steven Beatty and you should check out his and Laurel Kurtz's installation at PSU - here's the entire Flickr stream.

Of course, it got me thinking about all the other bottle cap coolness that must be out there. A Google search yielded all kinds of coolness!

LIke this guy, Bryant Holsenbeck, who does temporary, mandala-type installations with community help . . . all out of bottle caps and lids.
There's also cool sculptures from Janet Nolan, and Michelle Stitzlein has some great interactive work with kids. Then, there's this clear bottle cap installation planned by Christine Destrempes called "13,699" which, according to her web site, is the number of people who die every day from diseases related to a lack of clean water.

Jewelry

My explorations with bottle caps started out with jewelry making,
like this little skull and tassel pendant . . .

And this blue bead and feather necklace.

So, of course, I did a quick search on Etsy, and
found some other great folks doing bottle cap jewelry:

gjarvisjewelryetc on Etsy has alot of awesome jewelry made from bottlecaps
and old Barbie and doll parts.

StarsDreamsandJewels on Etsy also has some bottle cap pendants with doll parts.

And check out this lovely pin cushion ring made from a recycled bottle cap from BarbaraLousBoutique on Etsy.


With all of these cool ideas, how can you (or I) ever waste another bottlecap?!

A New Pinnacle of Bottle Cap Madness

The past month has been busy. There's been a lot of busy-ness, and not a whole lot on the creative front that's felt really productive. Except for this.


I have continued to collect plastic bottle caps, wash them, drill them, and connect them with wire. I suspended the wire tendrils from two layers of scrap plywood and on a whim, added strands of Christmas lights. I did the installation at SCRAP's new Re:Vision gallery, as part of the Leave No Plastic Behind show that opens tonight at 6 pm. It's out in the lobby of the office part of the building, and I really like the way it looks! Kind of like a Chihuly-inspired jellyfish made out of plastic junk.


I took these photos with my iPhone, and I don't have access right now to the "in process" photos I took on my regular camera (I'm taking advantage of a flight delay at Midway Airport in Chicago to post this). So, the quality of the images isn't the greatest, but I think you can get an idea - right now, the piece pretty much fills the gap between floor and ceiling, and I'm really liking the density of it.

Now, of course, I'm wanting to do something larger. So, if you've been saving bottle caps for me, and I haven't gotten to you yet, hang on to them. I still want them - e-mail me directly at sparky at eyesaflame dot com, and we'll figure out a way to connect! And big thanks to Dave and Su Lute, Darren Lute, Joh and Thane Thornton, Jo-El Hibian and Hubby, Leslie Peterson and Jim Sapp, Gretchin Lair and Sven Bonnichsen over at Scarlet Star Studios, Alea Bone and Family, and any one else who's given me bottle caps that I have forgotten!

More Bottlecap Madness

So, apparently, getting images of an iPhone is really simple. Once you figure out how to do it.

It took me awhile.

Here's a picture of the installation on the floor before I got it over to Keen headquarters for the installation and event last month . . . I was hoping for the tendrils to have some life and energy.


The bottle caps ended up kind of cuddly - here's Cheryl, the founder of Leave No Plastic Behind giving the installation a little hug . . .


And here it is hanging in Keen headquarters before the folks from Algalita Marine Research Foundation gave their presentation.


It ended up being long . . . but I wasn't really crazy about how it came out. It looks too long and stringy . . . all of the bottle caps are connected with wire, and I was hoping that they would have a little more spring, curl, bounce, life.

I'm reworking it now, stringing some of the strands on heavier wire and then looking at other ways of suspending the strands of caps. I'm wanting them to cluster more . . . and I'm thinking that I'll need more to really give it the fullness I want . . . It's like I'm wanting it to almost feel like a jellyfish or an octopus or a Chihuly glass piece.

I'm even imagining an entire room filled with bristling walls of bottle caps, bottle caps dangling from the ceiling, so it becomes an utterly tactile experience . . .

I don't think I'll get that far by the time the next installation goes up at SCRAP at the beginning of June, but I think it's going to be a much more interesting piece by then!

Plastic Bottle Cap Madness, and a Bit About the Ocean

Part of what artists do is to see things from a different perspective, and then to help other people see things differently, too.

This bottle cap thing started out innocently enough. I started saving them because you couldn't recycle them curbside - even though we have a wonderful curbside recycling program here in Portland, Oregon. And they were interesting. It seemed like they had potential. Like they might make interesting jewelry . . . after all, they kind of looked like giant bezels . . . and so I made a couple of little necklaces.

And then, last fall, I started asking people to save bottle caps for me. My boyfriend. His dad. My best friend. And then I started washing them, so that I'd have clean ones to work with. I washed them in the washing machine. In lingerie bags.



I started hoarding them. I had a milk crate overflowing with plastic bottle caps when I finally hooked up with Leave No Plastic Behind , a local non-profit who was looking for artists. I told them about my hoard of plastics that couldn't be curbside recycled, and said that I was wanting to do some kind of art project with them.


This was a few weeks ago. And they said, "Sure! We need a big installation for an event coming up April 21st! Wanna do something for it?" And I said, "Sure!"



So, that's why, if you follow me on Twitter, my posts have been full of my tales of plastic bottle cap hunting and gathering, washing, and drilling. This weekend, I finally figured out a good way of connecting them - which, sadly, did not end up involving either dental floss or chicken wire.


Then I re-drilled a bunch of the bottle caps. And began connecting them. Tonight, I made it over to Keen headquarters and installed the piece - which felt sort of like a big "test run."

It was for an event co-sponsored by the Surfrider Organization, and featuring speakers from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation - those are the folks who made a raft out of plastic bottles and drifted from California to Hawaii, all the while studying the plastic debris that's building up in the ocean. Now, they're biking from Canada to Mexico spreading the news. Here's a great article that talks about Algalita's work. For example, I had no idea that fish at the bottom of the marine food chain were eating plastic.



And I had no idea that plastic bottle caps are one of the top ten items found during beach cleanups, and are second only to cigarette butts in terms of general litter. Which, frankly, just makes them all the more appealing as an art material. So, now I'm looking to make the piece even bigger for another exhibit in June - got any plastic bottle caps?

(yes, yes, I'll have pictures of the installation for you tomorrow).