My “Trash Art” utilizes nonrecycled and single-use plastic as my medium to create three dimensional art pieces. About a year ago, I found myself ready to embark on a new artistic journey that would help the environment by bringing awareness to the vast quantity of plastic trash generated by humans. Plastic trash is a massive global problem with only 10% of all plastics recycled. It takes more than 500 years for plastics to biodegrade and consequently we are left with more pieces of mirco plastic in our oceans than there are stars in our galaxy. There are traces of plastic found in rain, in our vegetables and even unborn babies. As a mom of two young children, I personally found myself constantly disposing of plastic toys as they either broke or my children grew tired of them. As an environmentalist and an artist, I knew there had to be a better solution than just throwing away these broken and unwanted toys into the trash. This began my ew artistic expression as a “Trash Artist” by using plastic trash to create art and generate attention towards this massive environmental problem.

Through social media and by word of mouth, I began to ask my friends and family to save their unrecyclable plastics for me. Plastics that would essentially end up in landfills and ultimately our oceans. The massive collection effort spread to schools, neighborhoods, churches and even the Girl Scots as well as a lot of people on social media ALL wanting to get involved to help reduce the amount of plastic waste. The common thought was that everyone seemed to be equally frustrated with the amount of plastic waste produced, but no one really knew what to do about it.