Waste and Reuse

BY MADELEINE GOLITZ

My artwork consists of deconstructing discarded plastic items and reconstructing them in a way that mimics and interacts with the natural world. This process attempts to join the consumerist world of production with the biological world of creation through an emphasis on repetition and cycles. Nature’s most complex creations consist of many simpler smaller ones, like the cells that make up your body, organisms that make up an ecosystem, or people that make up a community. While an individual cell may be of little significance, when millions come together, they create something incredible. As individuals, we may not think we have an impact, but when all of our actions combine we can cause disasters or create movements.

Many capitalist practices have been disrupting balanced cycles and ecosystems. Instead of destroying them, we should be looking to mimic them. Waste is an inevitable product of creation, but that doesn’t mean the cycle must end there. These scraps of our innovation will be disruptions until we change our practices or implement ways to incorporate what we have discarded into future creations. My work depicts nature’s “waste” balanced with our own. Each piece illustrates a relationship we may have with the natural world and asks us to rethink if it is right.

EMBELLISH

DEPENDENT