UNMAKE PLASTIC: Demonstration of Capacity

What capacity I have to share is connected to how I got here. A few years back, I moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where I discovered an entire recycling economy powered by individual collectors, paid by the pound, gleaning what they could from the streets and dumpsters of the city. These are highly marginalized people, often children.

As an artist struggling with my role in the consumptive cycle and contribution to our environmental crisis, I naturally connected the resource these people produced with my own ambition to create- I would source my materials directly from the collectors.

I set about designing furnishings and utilitarian objects featuring these resources, focusing first on paper pulp. I began by experimenting with pulp and various binders, fillers, and pigments, producing materials for load testing. Next I developed techniques for moulding paper pulp composites. Finally, I settled on a design for a product line, and began producing master models to derive press moulds from.

Depicted here are lamp bodies designed after Alpine Swifts, with tail feathers typical of different flight modes. An array of wings attach to the lamp bodies, allowing for a large combination of postures.

A few challenges intervened. The product didn't satisfy my environmental impact requirements: these cast parts required large amounts of ground pigment, binder, and powdered minerals.   While putting waste paper to use and raising the value for collectors, the production process had become consumptive, and the product was a composite ill suited for future recycling.   I had focused on what was possible rather than net good.

So, I shifted my focus to another resource collected for recycling that did not require virgin materials: plastic.   My press moulding techniques and models would translate with minor adaptation. Course set, I began to lean in- but work was almost immediately disrupted when relocating to the United States.

Settled into Houston, Texas, I began to assemble my shop, collecting the tools necessary for the task ahead.   And then we flooded.   3 times.   The last was the biggest, with water over a meter and a half deep in my home and work space.   I paddled out of my living room in a canoe.

It has taken years to build back my shop capacity with all the basic tools necessary for fabricating- drills and drill press, grinders, saws, welder, oven, power systems, and much more -and bank enough wealth to fund the project. Most all of the records demonstrating my applicable work were lost in the flood; for others, only low-res images remain- such as this much-larger-than-life-size head study of an Alpine Swift, and decorative elements from a larger sculpting project:

A few additional examples of capacity. After collecting many abandoned lacrosse balls from our neighborhood park, I up-cycled them into shock absorbers for a truck bumper- an opportunity to add stick welding to my MIG and TIG capacity.

In need of a sculpting stand, I adapted a design utilizing a boat jack to lift the table, testing my ability to precisely fabricate parts using hand tools. All the major elements disassemble for packing. The stand features rotating top with cam-levers linked to split jambs for immobilizing the table top.