Trashland

Art Project and Community Engagement: Trashland

My art project shows an ocean with a sailboat on its waves and a sun hiding behind clouds. I used various pieces of trash I picked up, such as a discarded CD, a cork, candy wrappers, newspapers, and bottle caps. I looked at the trash I collected for inspiration on my project. When I picked up the CD, I knew it had a destiny as a sail. Thus, I knew I wanted to make an ocean scene, so I planned to put animals into the sea and use the disheveled newspapers as clouds. I wanted to incorporate more trash into my project, so I created animals out of trash, including a “bottle” nose dolphin. The animals and clouds made of trash represent how trash is invading our environment.

Trash is, in essence, unwanted waste. Therefore, humans and society as a whole should reduce the amount of trash we generate and keep it away from us while we still can. We cannot idly discard our litter into the ocean’s front door. If we do not take precautions, we become like trash ourselves—unwanted. Much of the trash we litter ends up on the beaches and in oceans, where unsuspecting animals eat them and die. I attended a beach cleanup at Dockweiler beach with Heal the Bay and in total, we found 4,381 pieces of trash in an hour and a half, a small fraction of the prodigious amount of trash blown daily to the coast. Additionally, birds and other animals are the firsts to find and mistakenly eat trash, which fills their stomachs and causes starvation and death. Thus, we need to pay attention to where we throw our trash to take care of our environment and ultimately, ourselves. I hope viewers will take into account the direness of our situation. Our planet is exponentially getting overwhelmed by trash, and if it goes down, we go down with it.