Category Archives: Recyclable Waste

One Mans Garbage is Another Mans Treasure

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Stuart Haygarth is a light designer that has been looked at a new eco-artist that uses “junk” to create beautiful lights. A series of his projects called Millennium from 2004 initially started by a one time piece where he sculpted 1000 explosive party poppers from the Millennium celebration in London in a shape of a chandelier. This work created a new series of works where he collected new party poppers to create lights.

On his site he perfectly explains the issue I have been talking about with recycling and how the inspired his project called “Drop”, in 2007.

“Drinking mineral water has become such an integral part of contemporary culture. There are many brands available and which brand you drink has become a lifestyle statement. One of the repercussions of this healthy drinking culture is the fact that the empty plastic water bottles are littering our landscapes and seas. Our landfill sites are being filled at an incredible rate with these plastic containers. Currently at airports we are not allowed to take water bottles through security checks and thousands of empty or half full bottles are confiscated. The water containers used in the work are donated and collected from Stansted Airport, London. This work focuses on the overlooked beauty and variety of these plastic water containers by concentrating on a small detail section, the base. The visual appearance of the plastic is slightly altered to produce a frosted glass quality. The first Drop chandelier was produced as a performance piece during Design Miami 2007.”

He has a lot more work on his site, go check it out.

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Hug A Tree

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Everyone has heard of the term  “tree hugger,” which is simple an environmentalist or person who believes that trees should not be cut down and make it there mission to protect these living things. Artists  Agnieszka Gradzik and Wiktor Szostalo decided to turn this word into a living artwork, where they collected branches from around a tree to construct “wicker-people” embracing the tree. These people are actual tree huggers. These wicker people are set up in a line, where you as the viewer can wait along with them to activity hug the tree, inviting people to respond and comment on the environmental issues surrounding trees.

This art project indirectly relates to the discussion of my blog, recycling. You wouldn’t think of the organic form of a tree being recycled but the by-product of the material paper is still an issue of recycling in our technologically based world.

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Illuminated Recycled Garden

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Pastic Bag Garden By Luzinterruptus

Pastic Bag Garden By Luzinterruptus

Art Group Luzinterruptus created an installation called “A Cloud of Bags Visit the Prado” outside The Prado Museum for 4 hours.They used 80 plastic bags each inflated by the wind were every single plastic bag had a light inside. This art intervention speaks to the problem of sustainability be illuminating the issue through art. These little bags of light in my opinion act as a metaphor for an idea described as a light bulbs shining; these illuminated bags are the light bulb ideas of recycling, that we need to find every way possible to recycle our material.

LIGHT UP YOUR LIFE, RECYCLE

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Recycling Plastic For More Then Just The Environment

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In many of my posts I have talked about recycling your plastic material; mostly talking about recycling your water bottles. I have been focusing on artists lately and have found an artists named Aurora Robson who creates sculptures out of plastic.

By Aurora Robson

By Aurora Robson

Robson focuses on recycling so much that she actually welcomes people to send her “junk” material in the mail. She is essentially creating a recycling process of her own. She twists, cuts, reforms these pieces of plastic into abstract forms, lit by solar-powered LED lights to create these illuminated organic forms. Her works remind me of David Chihuly’s glass sculptures in its organic nature.

Here are some of her works:

This video is an interview with Aurora Robson describing her thoughts and practices of her art. Enjoy!

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Eco Art

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Carolina Fontoura

Carolina Fontoura

I love my bike and I hope with good care I can keep it for a very long time, but one thing that can not keep forever is the tires. Naturally, tires start to wear down with use.

Tires are very important to recycle. They can be used to make sandals, roads, soccer turf, etc. But one artist recycles this material into a beautiful are chandelier. Mexican artists Carolina Fontoura’s bike tires to create a exquisite light. These works not only showcase an artist who is recycling but her work is visually appealing. it looks good in a gallery and in your dinning room.

Carolina Fontoura had her first solo show called Connect, where she showcases these beautifully created lights. Connect showcases a series of chandeliers that were inspired by DIY projects, bike punk culture, and the victorian era. Her handmade pieces borderline the industrial and elegant look while asking the viewer to take a closer look at what the chandelier is made of. She is addressing the issue of environmentalism and sustainability. “She admits to having a strong connection with  urban bicycle culture and hopes to inspire audiences to question their ideas on what is beautiful and functional.”

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Hangers Can Be More Than Just Coat-hangers

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David Mach

                 David Mach

While searching for artists that have focus on the theme sustainability I found David Mach. He is a fine artist that uses coat-hangers to create his large and intrusive sculptures. Mach states on his website that he “believe that an artist must be an ideasmonger responding to all kinds of physical location, social and political environments, to materials, to processes, to timescales and budgets.” I believe that everyone in the world is responding to some sort or event is issue that surrounds us; it is very difficult for us, as humans to ignore the influences around us, its natural. We can see that this artist has responded to the issues that surround us, being sustainability by recycling materials to be used in a new form then it was initially intended. Mach likes to work with a variety of materials. He stated that “It’s no understatement to say I am a materials junkie – jumping from highly-painted realistic cast fibreglass pieces to sculpture with coathangers, to a thatched barn roof laced with fibre-optics to designs for camera obscuras (or at least the buildings to house them) and layouts for parks.” He will use any material to form something new; he will adapt to the world around him to create his masterpieces much like politicians, businessmen and doctors.

Here is some of his hanger series:

Here is a different approach he takes to using found material to create his works:

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Gugger Petter

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Everyone has read a newspaper at one point or another; whether you are reading the comics, the daily news or the sports you have picked up that paper and hopefully when finished recycled them.  Every week or everyday a new issue of a newspaper comes out and we are informed on the events of the world, but little do we think of the amount of waste these newspapers create. We must be conscious of this issue. I know that thanks to technology we are afforded the ability to get some newspapers in an application on our phone, ereader, or tablet.

Artists have addressed this issue by using newspapers to create their art pieces to act as a process of recycling the material. Petter is a fine artist that works internationally creating 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional works from newspapers. She likes using the limited palette of black and white, which has been her main choice through most of her works. Her initial intension for using newspapers was the materials natural presentation of our daily lives.  Petter has a “profound respect for this material,” she stated on her website that “I have never regarded it as ‘recycled’ or ‘trash.’”  This comment struck me, she doesn’t “regard it as recycled,” well then what does she regard it as? I believe her work speaks to this. The material of her work is never “waste” or something that should be recycled and no longer used. She is not giving a second life to this newspaper, she views it as never being dead. A newspaper is what it is, regardless of how its being used and when its being used. This is a very different perspective taken on waste and recycling that I have taken. Recycling something doesn’t mean the object is useless or waste or dead and there are many processes for recycling materials.

Here’s some examples of Gugger Petter:

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Repurposing

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Many people turn to the website “Pinterest” to find ways of decorating there homes, recipes, funny pictures, DIY projects, etc. One thing I have found useful is the ways you can save your money or reuse material is through repurposing. Repurposing has even become a trend in todays age, where people are creating new ways to reuse that old window or antique luggage.

Here are some ideas I have found to help show you that your “waste” or “junk” can actually be valuable.

Help give your products a second life. It can help save you money, give you a new trendy decorative edge and most importantly help save our planet.

Related articles

Waste Intervention

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“We are the Landscape” – Steven Siegal

Steven Siegal is an American fine artist that uses recycled material and pre-consumer products such as, newspapers, crushed soda cans, shredded rubber to create his public art installations in our landscape. He “reinvents the role of sculpture for an eco-conscious planet… that reflects the deposit-and-decay cycle that underlines the making of the land.”  Siegal has created these works all over the world in places like, Europe, Asia, and North America. His main objective is to create a conversation about the landscape and how our society is affecting it.

His sculptures act as interventions within our landscape, we have to stop and address the “elephant in the room” that is waste consumption.  There is a subtly to some of his works, specifically the ones that blend into the landscape, that I believe parallels the concealed issue of waste within out society. As scene in previous blogs and articles I have read, it is very difficult for us to see the mass consumption and issue that is waste and landfills because its impossible to physically see it all at once, but just because we cannot see it doesn’t mean its there.

In a way his work is acting as a solution by recycling material to create something new. His first objective is to show the world its waste but his underline message provides a solution of recycling or some sort of waste management. As I have scene while researching this topic, there are plenty of solutions to tackle this issue, and it seems to all point back to recycling and how we discard or reuse materials.

“Sited Works” Series

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To Recycle or Not Recycle?… That is The Real Question

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As I was cleaning the printmaking studio I work at last night, there was a water bottle that was left on a table so I emptied it and went to recycle it, but there was no recycling bin in the room so what did I do I threw it in the garbage.. opps But I know many people do the very same thing. I like to say that if there was a recycling bin in the room I would have recycled it, but thats a simple excuse. And the fact is there was a recycling bin right out the door of the room.

So why do people not recycle?

  1. recycling is “inconvenient”: This is most likely the main reason people do not recycle, but is probably the weakest argument. We are just being lazy.
  2. no space to recycle
  3. what is in it for me: We can’t see the benefits of recycling.
  4. recycling doesn’t make a great difference, so whats the point?
  5. it just to hard: “I have to have everything separated and go to certain facilities to recycle certain products”
  6. who cares
  7. I will recycle next time… yah right
  8. does recycling really save money. Buying a brita filter water bottle, you still need to buy expensive filters all the time
  9. someone goes through the garbage and pulls out the recycling: nope thats a poor myth

BUT

there are many reasons we should

  1. recycling saves energy: it save energy because the manufacturer doesn’t have to make something new
  2. helps to reduce the changing landscape from landfills: we are running out of space for landfills therefore we need to find ways of recycling
  3. recycling is good for the economy: recycled goods use less material, saves money, and materials
  4. protects the wildlife and our resources: if we don’t recycle the waste it could end up in oceans or other animal habitats which ultimately destroy their habitats
  5. would help aid our climate problems: reduces greenhouse gases
  6. limits pollution
  7. creates jobs
  8. increases new demand for recyclable products
RECYCLE

RECYCLE

We need to start making space to recycle and make it a number one priority . We are constantly making up excuses for why we can’t when really the answers are pretty simple. If there isn’t a spot for you to recycle in our everyday life, then but in bin in there. Be proactive. We may not see the need to recycle right away, but it will help in the long run and for future generations. As seen perviously in the Mobro 4000, we are running out of room to store our waste therefore we must recycle.

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