Spout of Hope

"Sprout of Hope" 

  

When I did the beach clean-up at Dockweiler State Beach, I had collected trash to turn them in an art project. The total trash that we cleaned up was approximately 4030 pieces. According to Heal the Bay website, millions of pounds of trash find their way to go to the ocean every day. The data shows that people littered on the beach. The large number of trash on the beaches is only a fraction of the trash that ends up in oceans. This says a lot about how careless people are when it comes to disposing their trash.

 The total amount of trash collectively builds up over time. They will contaminate the water, affect the current flow, damage the natural habitat and finally cause diseases to marine animals. According to the Heal the Bay website, when people leave trash such as plastics or Styrofoam on the sand, the litter get carried out into the ocean. Marine animal will think that the litter is food and then consume them. They could also get trapped or strangled by plastic bags or other litter. For example, over 1 million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals are killed by pollution every year. This fact disturbed me and inspired me to emphasize consciousness in other people by creating my piece of art.

 My art project included all of the trash that I have collected. I used all of the bottle caps to create sun flowers and straws to make branches. For the background, I use candy wrappers, plastic bags, and cigarettes butt to make clouds, and the rest of the trash: wood, seaweed, and tree plants turn in to a nice background. The artwork showed us that even in the dark background, there will be some sun flowers which will shine in the dark. The sunflowers represent hope. A hope for our oceans and for our earth. I want to convey the message to others that they can be one of the sunflowers of hope when they consciously think about taking care of the ocean. When people see my artwork, it will inspire and inform them on the necessity that we need to take actions to protect our environment and also the natural habitat of marine animals.