Beach CleanUp A visual guide to the art of harvesting inspirational junk from beautiful Liberian beaches while leaving the world a better place.
Luca Bai Varaschini
I was born in Robertsport, Liberia, many years ago. I love to go back, also because I love - and miss - my childhood beaches on the Atlantic Coast of West Africa. Beaches have always been the source of a number of activities, and one of my favourite is collecting stuff.
Some stuff you can’t collect: it’s too big. Like an end of a dug-out fishing canoe: occasionally, these functional wooden sculptures break so badly they have to be discarded.
A camera is a good thing to take along: it allows to keep a trace of casual art forms within their context.
When there is no human intervention, it’s even better.
Sometimes it feels like being in an art gallery.
The difference is being the only visitor.
Human intervention comes in the form of trash, brought on the shore by the ocean’s tides and waves. (This is a cut-out section of a flip-flop slipper used as floater, among many similar others, on the hand-cast fishing nets the Kru tribesmen use daily.)
Most of the trash is made up of plastic: of course, it lasts very long.
Plastic also floats, so rivers, seas and oceans take it around, like the wind does with fallen leaves.
Many toys are made of plastic; when they are broken and thrown away, they become Pop Art.
Pop Art makes the viewer wonder on the meaning of modern society, and it’s rituals.
Personal items tell different stories.
Hidden stories.
Secret identities.
Mysterious lives.
Simple distractions.
Heavy duty.
Remember that movie, the one with the grand piano on the beach, somewhere in Australia centuries ago?..
Glass is also man-made and takes a lot to disappear but, for some reason, it doesn’t disturb if it has been polished by water, wind and sand: and maybe because it comes from sand, it is somewhat acceptable, and collected by many.
Bones look like plastic, last a lot, get polished by atmospheric agents and are not man-made; they never miss to reveal the beauty in nature’s way of designing beings.
(Many debates have not solved the enigma on this page: what part of what creature could this possibly be?)
All seashells are, in some way, the bones of the soft creatures that once lived within them. Seashells on a beach are not considered garbage, and are o.k.
Many humans collect seashells; they find beauty in them.
Several seeds, too, use the oceanic currents to move around. Not this, a mango seed, which has died out, and become a piece of driftwood.
Many other are probably alive, just waiting for their time to open up.
Fire Crackers are among these. (They are called like this because the dark rim can become hot as fire when scraped repeatedly against a hard, rough surface as concrete: the purpose is to burn your playmates by placing the hot Fire Cracker on any part of their skin. The result is immediate.)
These have no name, nor any use, but just a shape, and a smooth, velvety hard surface which is agreeable to manipulate, for the pleasure of doing so.
Palm kernels are generally discarded after the extraction of the oil from the dates. Though the process is rarely done by the shore, it is quite common to find these kernels on the beach, well washed and polished by nature. They always remind me of a surprised face.
Each kernel bears three faces - or three expressions - and no two kernels are alike.
Like miniature coconuts, they are made of a very hard wood. Too hard to ignore.
Some stuff, like little palm kernels, can be taken back home, and kept at hand until something happens.
Beach Flowers happen. Or Straw Suckers.
Then new forms (and modern technologies) awaken experimentation.
From putting a nut at one end of a stick from the cheap table-mat to putting one on each end is just a matter of time, and Beach Flowers become a DIY Calder mobile with a tribal touch. Or Straw Suckers become Double-ended Spaghetti-eaters.
http://issuu.com beachcleanup
Finding the barycenter is easy, punching a hole in the sticks too; passing the 0.2 mm. fishing line through makes it seem like putting a thread in a needle. Knots along the line will be enough to keep the rotators apart.
m/varasca/docs/
If they do come into contact, kernels knock like rocks and the whole movement is affected. Which is a nice thing.
Observing a whole cycle, from the initial rotation to the final stillness of all parts, can be somewhat h y p n o t i c.
Digital captures of random movements, by a mobile designed to do so, offer rich opportunities to explore the principles of composition.
But there are many other forms that one can find on a beach which are ready-made sculptures.
Driftwood. The combined action of water and sand generally ensures agreeable results, in terms of plasticity; then again, if the original piece of wood had been ravaged by bugs, the final piece can be even more intriguing.
(roots, or parts of them, tend to provide the most interesting pieces)
The most unique surprises are to be found among the smaller chunks of wood; macro photography allows to enter into these microwordls, and to remain bewildered by certain resemblances with the bigger world.
The complicacy and intricacy that insects and natural agents attain on driftwood deliver alien-like shapes.
Like asteroids in outer space, these simple chunks of wood drift along the oceans of our planet, eventually landing on a shore where someone will find them.
(and make a book)
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beautiful beach is as boring as anywhere else if there is nothing to do; I’ve never been able to lie down and get a tan, or sleep; even reading is too ‘relaxing’ compared with the tons of activities that can be done, instead. Walking around is a good thing: it’s healthy, you get tanned and you see things. Taking pictures of the interesting things is an alternative to drawing them; part of this book is made with such photos. The idea of the book comes as a change from the online galleries I usually rely on when it comes to sharing my experiences with friends and family; the book, additionally, guides the visitor along a chosen path. This one is the path of junk I collected while cleaning up a couple of beaches in Robertsport, which are surprisingly filthy; I collected plastic, paper, metal and glass, the last two being mostly bottles and cans. Most of the plastic is also made up of containers, but sometimes there are these parts of toys that remind fossils from a lost civilization. The privilege of cleaning up a beach is the right to keep any of the collected items, to take them back home and to take even more pictures, which are those of the rest of the book.
Thanks for coming along, Luca Bai
A collection of pictures taken on the beaches in Robertsport during the couple of weeks between 2015 and 2016, and of objects collected from the same beaches during the couple of cleanups the author suddenly felt the urge to perform.
The author, Luca Bai Varaschini, is an italian graphic designer who was born in Robertsport in 1963.
lvarasca@gmail.com