trash talk

there are a lot of bad things to be said about rubbish

it can look yucky, it causes pollution and other harm to the environment, it can be smelly, it takes up space
an article appeared recently about a bloke who's preparing to sail across the pacific in a boat made of plastic bottles to highlight the phenomenal plastic wastelands that litter the oceans

but there are also a lot of clever people out there doing interesting & wonderful things with rubbish
water bottles come into their own as they are assembled into a rather pretty chandelier, hung in a shopping centre in Kuala Lumpur

another "environmental" use of rubbish,
a light-shade made from apple mac packaging by eric lawrence










and in situ in a very stylish studio

rubbish for art's sake, designer winnie lui puts some white stuff together and makes a chandelier









stuart haygarth's tide chandelier, the result of months, years, tramping the kent coastline and picking up the sea's flotsam.

"spectacle" - made out of ... you guessed it

read more here

haygarth's barnacle, "the physical appearance of the gloves reminds me of the hardy beach vegetation found on dungeness beach or exotic sea urchins."

i love it when one thing leads to another

a few months ago i read a story, moby-duck, or the synthetic wilderness of childhood, by donovan hohn about beachcoming along the west coast of the united states and canada, where locals started finding plastic children's toys washing up - sometimes one or two, sometimes enough to fill a bath tub - the irony here being that they were in fact bath-tub toys: yellow rubber duckies, blue turtles, green frogs and red beavers that had fallen off a container ship. it captured the public imagination and was widely reported, and inspired eric carle to write 10 little rubber ducks


bower birds bling their nests with blue bits & pieces

this bowerbirding reminds me irresistably of derek jarman's debris and detritus garden on the kentish coast

gardens & reclamation come together on a spectacular scale in the wonderful sculpture garden in chandigarh, india set on 25 acres and made of stone and "waste materials", featured on around the world in 80 gardens


it inspires presenter, monty don, to say:

"can you think of a better way of recycling than making it into beautiful art? it should be compulsory. do something beautiful with your rubbish."

more outsider art on a smaller scale - art made with
bottlecaps, collected by a fellow called mr lamb

bottlecap people, pouchy, homer and gary

it all begs the question, is oscar wrong when he serenades us with "i love trash"