This series began when I read about a whale that had washed ashore the Pacific ocean with over 80 plastic bags in its stomach. Sea mammals and other sea creatures think the bags floating in the ocean are jellyfish, which they snack on, and they consume the bags to their demise.
Our single use plastic culture is creating the conditions for devastation of many habitats. Plastics have become integrated into our ecosystems in a way almost unfathomable. Recently in a remote region in the Pyrenees plastic plastic micro beads were found falling alongside rain from the sky. In a recent trip to the deepest place in the ocean humankind has yet traveled, the explorers found a plastic bag.
Each piece in this series was designed using machine embroidery software. Thread colors were chosen to match the colors on the bag, mirroring the ways in which the bags are conceived of by their prey as jellyfish. The embroidered jellyfish on the bag draws the viewer in with its visual language, much as a whale may be drawn to the bag in the sea to satiate its hunger. In both cases, a material that is transforming the very nature of our world is seducing us.
This work asks its audience to reconsider our own assumptions about what it means to be human in this consumer driven world. What does reversing course at this point mean? Can we recreate the past in the future and reestablish a harmonious planetary ecosystem?
