The Beach Clean-Ups

For Future Generations: A plastic pollution study of Lake Erie (2020)

Is the result of over forty beach cleanups focused on researching, documenting, and collecting freshwater plastic pollution on Emerald Beach, Lake Erie. At each cleanup, pollution was photographed and collected within strict project guidelines, leading to the creation of Photographic Typologies using image selections to provide a gridded abstract view of the pollution found in a single day. While processing the plastic pollution, a desire arose to emphasize the object's collective while denaturing the concept of a natural process. This led me to create synthetic fossils, Future Fossils. 

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By performing clean-ups and forming new material from human-made objects that have become pollution, For Future Generations surfaces the ambivalent and subjective nature of contemporary narratives about environmentalism and the phenomenon of synthetic objects found throughout the seasons in waterways.

 

Funded by The Global Warming Grant awarded by the Arts Services Initiative of Western New York.

Project Data provided to the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

In collaboration with #plasticfreebuffalo, founded by Oltmer, a community beach clean-up focused on local plastic pollution education and art as activism.

 

For Future Generations was exhibited at the CEPA gallery from January 17 - Feb 15, 2020.

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