I was asked recently to share my work and “teach” a couple of classes to the youngsters at the Young At Art Museum in Broward County. I chose to orchestrate the creation of a collaborative artwork on canvas, using the trash I had cleaned up from the beach, Each group of young students were to collaborate on the same project. What a fun experience, and the children were surprisingly excited about getting their hands into the large bins containing thousands of assorted plastic pieces, mostly broken, including colorful toys, toothbrushes, straws, wrappers, caps, etc.
After I was introduced that day, I shared what motivated me, why I was doing what I was doing, asking the kids think about what excited them and to use that passion in their artwork. I shared a short slideshow and included photos of the trash I had picked up over the years.
Sometimes I’d take photos of individual items, toys, toothbrushes and candy wrappers, and other times I would dump all collected trash and take a group shot.
At one point I decided to create a series of photos, each day making a letter out of the day’s collection. I would arrange the trash of the day and form it into a letter. I tackled the capital letters first then I spent the next 26 days working on the lower case letters. Once that was done I went through the numbers and other mathematical symbols I could think of. During the days I made the S, T and U the amount of debris was much more than usual (ebb and flow). Typically I’d take photos from straight above. Those days I could not get “high” enough and thus resorted to taking more of an angle shot, walking away from the letter to get the entire letter in frame. What might I use that alphabet stoop series for?
Contemplate creative uses.
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