plastic horizon series


The Plastic Horizon series consists of constructed painting-like objects that explore a unique convergence of color and materiality.  These wall works are made from post-consumer reprocessed plastics that have passed through a primitive granulation, mixing and extrusion process.  The subsequently cut pieces reveal the visual complexity of melting, mixing, merging petrochemical molecules.  Strips of this material are then layered​ by the artist​ into a variety of compositions, and sequential, alignments.  ​Some of these works​ suggest the simple abstraction of color charts, while others​ evoke distant horizons of land, water, and sky​.​ ​Still other works more strongly suggest geological ​sedimentation and ​layering--linking them to the inherent fossil fuel origins of plastics and processes of mining drilling and extraction.  

Albatrosses' Belly, 2016 delves furth​e​r into this convergence of color, materiality, waste, and landscape by referencing the troubling reality of albatrosses dying by ingesting plastics as they surface feed in the oceans of the world. With a lively cross-hatched motif this piece adheres to extreme geometries and abstraction​ with only the vaguest suggestion of ​an interior space: the belly. But the petrochemical post-consumer molecules themselves tell the story--with our growing knowledge of their place as an increasingly abundant and defused feature of the earth's oceans and planetary food chains. This is ​a​ haunting image that emerges from the title.  The bodies of dead birds, decomposing on the beach; bones and feathers framing the brightly colored handful of plastic fragments that clogged their stomachs and killed them.