The smokestack series
The Smokestack Series is a project started in 2021 using plastic grocery bags and simple basketry coiling to create various smokestack forms. Leaning into the irony of spending dozens of hours to keep a handful (hundreds) of plastic bags from the landfill, with this series I call attention to the relatively quaint idea of recycling as the “personal responsibility” of individual end consumers, versus the massive scale of pollution and waste caused by global industry, here represented by the factory’s smokestack.
The Smokestack coiling process informed further pieces of the installation. Handle and seam scraps from cutting the bags were tied together to keep them from floating around my studio space. As a unique object, these tied bag scraps then became a subject of study - their translucency, crispness, and somehow organic shape - and the drawings on found and handmade papers were born. Once a mass of scrap bundles were accumulated after creating multiple Smokestacks, they effortlessly became clouds of smoke filling the air with the byproduct of my own "manufacturing" process.
It is my wish that someday in the not-too-distant future, I will be unable to create these sculptures, as the single-use plastic they're made of will no longer be available.
The Smokestack coiling process informed further pieces of the installation. Handle and seam scraps from cutting the bags were tied together to keep them from floating around my studio space. As a unique object, these tied bag scraps then became a subject of study - their translucency, crispness, and somehow organic shape - and the drawings on found and handmade papers were born. Once a mass of scrap bundles were accumulated after creating multiple Smokestacks, they effortlessly became clouds of smoke filling the air with the byproduct of my own "manufacturing" process.
It is my wish that someday in the not-too-distant future, I will be unable to create these sculptures, as the single-use plastic they're made of will no longer be available.
