Forever Art IV-VI

Styrofoam Pieces

Spray-paint and Styrofoam are ubiquitous everyday materials in our consumer society. They quicken our processes or secure and lighten our purchased products, in turn, they make our lives easier, even though we are producing more and more trouble for future generations. This body of work utilizes and confronts these two environmentally toxic mediums. Never advertised is the fact that these tools of convenience will take a millennium to degrade, ironically since the use of these materials is usually short-lived. I intentionally disintegrate and mangle each piece before changing its structure. These reinvented mixed media pieces offer a critical examination of our social constructs which allow us to rarely, if ever, see the negative environmental impacts of these forever materials. 

Beyond morphing these new objects into beautiful and odious artifacts, the installation of these works together in a gallery setting even further removes them from their original purposes. I want the audience to look at themselves more critically in our shared consumer bubble. The use of trash is not original as a medium to focus on the environment, nor is confronting the nature of people doing what's easiest, and not necessarily what’s best, but the process of transforming these materials into fine art even though it had already served its original purpose is refreshing and enlightening. Challenging the norm with discarded objects or ones considered of little to no use and sculpting them to prove they can still be useful even if it’s as something else fascinates me beyond just the political overtones. I want to create a contradiction because we ourselves are one.