A Little Hippie Art

I have come to the realization that I am turning into a Hippie. I have avoided becoming a full blown communist meat hating hippie so far. Just the other day I ate a nice medium rare slice of rib eye heaven, engaged in capitalism (I bought a Mac), and then I kicked some hippie while he was down. Lately however my thinking and art has been influenced by some environmental issues. While working for North Idaho College I had an awakening as to the laziness of the people in our area when it comes to recycling. At the time I was taking an independent study sculpture class from Michael Horswill (excellent professor), and I was playing around with the idea of creating a piece out of plastic (plastic drink bottles) that I found in the trash. As I collected those bottles I was amazed and a little sickened at the numbers that were going in the trash on campus on a daily basis, the numbers were in the THOUSANDS.

I collected the majority of these bottles from one floor in one building on campus during a 30 day period. My co-workers also collected some for me in other areas but I tried to stick to using the bottles from that one area. I did use some from other areas to replace ones that I ruined or that were full of some disgusting unnamed substance. While it did not end up being what I originally started out to do (my art rarely ever does), it conveyed my idea in a way that proved to be effective. The finished sculpture called "Recycled" was in the shape of a 7' soda bottle. What I wanted to show was that we don't pay attention (or we just don't care) to what we throw away, and where it is going (in our landfills).

Recycled shown with Artist Jon Harty

The piece was displayed in the Molstead Library, during the Popcorn Forum at NIC, and on Earth Day at NIC. The piece was also mentioned in the Week's Worth News letter published by North Idaho College and in an article in the student newspaper, The Sentinel (even though they did not give me credit, they did showed a photo of the piece).

I tried to put in a link to the original article but was foiled by windows, save me Mac!!! (Mac will be here soon). Unfortunately the plastic bottle came to an unfortunate end at the hands of ASNIC. They moved the bottle without asking and it fell apart (if they had asked I had a plan for moving it without damage). I really shouldn't complain to much as this gave "Recycled" it's fifteen minutes of fame (and it is in google images thanks to Erin). I did repair the piece and even though it was not quite that same afterwards, it was used on Earth Day.