Shinique Smith. Bright Matter, 2013. Clothing and fabric culled from Los Angeles and ribbon on wood panel, 63 x 52 x 5 inches.
This week the gears were really set in motion. Starting the week off with a lot of sketching and drawing focused on planning my sculpture. The week ended with a beach clean up in Davenport, CA with my family and some friends.
I was also able to attend the artist lecture by Shinique Smith at the space Art + Practice located in LA on Thursday night. It was really exciting to see her speak in person because she has greatly influenced my own work within the past year. Through her uses of textiles in a sculptural manner, she is able to create a dialogue through the cloths connection to culture, ideals, and history. I find Shinique's understanding of her materials refreshing and an exciting sculptural conversation. Also to hear that I’m not the only one with weirdly large collections of items that I know will one day be part of a work but am hanging onto them until I know what that is!
On Friday I met with a Chapman Alumna, Lauren Smith, that works at the Orange County Coastalkeeper and learned about their beach clean ups they put on at Huntington State Beach and San Clemente State Beach. I learned that their biggest clean up was this past February at Huntington due to the large rains and trash flowing down the watershed. Also that in their location they focus on in Huntington is that the amount of trash is also affected by how good the surf is that week. So not only does the beach become a lot more strewn with trash during the busy summer season it also is dependent on the weather and the moon!
Then ending the week participating in Save Our Shores beach clean up at Davenports CA main beach. I brought my parents and some close family friends. It was really exciting for me to see the differences in trash found. When we first got there and met with the representative from SOS we were informed that it was a party oriented beach so beer bottles and other items of that assortment were expected. She was spot on. I picked up so many metal beer caps as well as glass beer bottles. The other items that we found a lot of was burnt newspaper, cigarette butts, and wrappers from food. There was around 80+ pounds of trash collected with around 20 volunteers. Another exciting part of today was talking with everyone that came with me about how surprised they were to find so much trash even though it looks like a clean beach on first glance. I hope that I have created a shift in mindset of single use plastic and recycling options.
Trash on the beach is really easy to overlook when you are surrounded by such beautiful views and a relaxing sound track of nature. I highly recommend the next time you are at the beach to take a look down at the sand and start to really see what’s beneath your feet.
An experimentation with materials
