LightBears

Years ago there was a popular movie about freeing Willy from his captivity and letting him return to the ocean. Then there was the famous animated film about Nemo, and later another about his friend Wanda. It seems that the ocean plays a large part in people’s dreams, and naturally so since the ocean as a whole is far larger than any of the land masses put together.

It’s easy to see this if you look at one of the old-fashioned globes showing the entire earth, and it’s awe inspiring if you stop and think about what you’re seeing. Equally naturally, as land dwellers, we don’t often stop to think about the Sea, unless we’re fantasizing about purchasing a sailboat and living a life free of any apparent constraints.

In the online magazine COLOSSAL dated November 6, 2023, there is an article written by Grace Ebert in which she interviewed an artist named Pam Longobardi.  Ms Longobardi has become well known for her was efforts in helping to bring together, and work with, a group called “the Drifters Project”, whose mission has been to engage activists, environmentalists and fellow artists in working collectively to remove plastic and other trash from the ocean, starting off the tip of Hawaii. The work of the Drifters Project has not been limited just to Hawaii, but also to Alaska, Costa Rica, Indonesia, and other areas whose shorelines have been littered with refuse.

 The Drifters Project is a collaborative effort of artists and others to remove the plastics and other debris floating in the water and turn it into a series of art installations.  There is a purpose to these art installations.  Their aim is to help people see what is the direct result of failed recycling and casual disregard for what is tossed into the ocean, off a boat, dumped into the trash, or just left along the coastline after a nice day sunning at the beach.  

It’s so easy to think that you are the only one when you are leaving behind a bottle or a discarded sandwich wrapper, or when trash day comes and it’s too much of a bother to separate the recyclables from what is garbage. It is so very easy to say “well it’s just me, everybody else will make up for it,”  but there are a lot of us and so there are a lot of people who identify as “me.”   And so these things wind up in landfill, which does not always stay on the land; sometimes it is shipped out to sea on barges or sent to other countries to deal with.

 Regardless of how it happens, the very marine life on which we depend for food is dying and ill because of the trash and plastics that wind up in the water.  Sometimes sea creatures mistake the styrofoam or other inedible items as food, and it fills their stomachs rendering it impossible for them to take in life-sustaining nutrients. 

I’m sure over the course of the last decade or so we have all seen images of such atrocities as sea tortoises with straws stuck in their noses or their mouths, and other marine life entangled in rope or netting. In some instances, whales have come to humans to seek help; and unfortunately there are cases where, despite their best efforts, the poor whale or other marine creature could not be disentangled…

 It’s not clear yet what it is that causes the navigational system of beings such as whales and dolphins to go awry, resulting in their being beached and dying. But as a culture we have an obligation to stop and think about more than just our own selves. 

As I mentioned earlier, this ocean, if you look at the globe, is far greater in mass and volume than any of the land on which we all live, and yet we treat it as if it’s a trash receptacle with infinite capacity. 

This is poisoning and destroying so much of what we value. When summer time comes around, at least in the western cultures, we think of taking a vacation; we think of going to the beach if we can afford to get to one, or going to an island and lying out on the beach and going snorkeling. The ads that we see on TV and magazines and online all show crystalline, azure blue water and beautiful fish swimming underneath glass bottomed boats. That may still happen — it’s possible, depending on the location.  

But at the same time what is definitely happening is, there is a huge, enormous, ginormous amount of plastic and trash that is forming into an island as well as washing up on shorelines.

 Think of going to an idyllic location and daydreaming about lying on a pristine beach and cavorting in lovely warm water,  and finding instead with a shock piles of trash floating in the water that you want to swim or snorkel in.  In my own life experience, I had the luxury of living near the water in a New England town and on a hot day I wanted nothing more than to dive into the water and cool off. However, because a cruise boat had been by earlier that day, I found myself wading through floating napkins, empty drink cups and the like. It was not pleasant. And this was 30 years ago; I can’t imagine what it’s like now.

This is the impact of what we’re doing. I want to speak with you through this blog as an opportunity to not only raise our own awareness of our impact on the world around, us but especially to praise and thank all of the artists in the Drifters Project and others like it who take their own time and energy and work hard — this is hard work, not easy work — to pull the trash out of the water and dispose of it properly.   

As an artist myself, all too often I receive art supplies wrapped in bubble wrap or shrink wrap inside of a cardboard box which is then placed inside of a larger cardboard box with plastic peanuts around it. As an artist, I cannot afford to let this just happen, I can’t just toss it in the trash, and so therefore I make art that uses these substances as part of its underpinnings or as part of its statement, perhaps part of the painted environment that I create using the various substances that come to hand.  out of paint and other things that are made from this trash.

An example of a piece of art that I made, entitled “Ocean Recycling” appears below in this blog.  In creating it, I deliberately obscured the Marine creatures from view and made the water appear murky to show the impact of the trash that litters the ocean. If you look hard, down at the bottom right you’ll even see a very scruffy looking orange object that is meant to represent an old submarine type ocean observatory, along with various barrels and bottles and other substances tangled in the seaweed (represented by the use of green bubble wrap!)

It is a nightmare sometimes for me, looking at the packaging and wondering what will I make from this that I haven’t already made….  It takes ingenuity and skill and commitment to make this trash, this non-recyclable, non-biodegradable stuff that we throw out, into something that can be a thing of beauty. Just like this blog, it takes effort and intent.  The artists in the Drifters Project have created some stunning pieces of art, all made from what was taken out of the ocean. Sadly, the influx of trash may exceed even their best efforts, or at least that is my own fear.

I’m glad to be able to write this blog, and I’m glad to put my energies into my art to use up the non-biodegradable trash that comes my way, because I love this world of ours. I can’t tell you the depths of the passion that I have for this beautiful planet that we live on. And the sorrow that I carry in my heart whenever I see the impact of our neglect.

I know that I am not saying anything new, but I urge you all,  everyone who reads this blog,  please share it with your friends, talk about it with your neighbors, and think about how you at home can do things differently.

 So that we can honor the creatures that live in our ocean,  so that we can have clean waters to swim in and enjoy, and so that we can minimize the amount of damage that we have done to this wonderful planet that is our only home. 

I love this earth, I love its peoples, and I love the beings that swim in its oceans, soar across its skies and populate the woodlands and other areas of this land. It brings me joy to be alive on this beautiful planet Earth, our mother, our planet, our home in the universe. 

And I encourage you to open your own hearts and feel that joy, feel a commitment to helping to preserve and strengthen and beautify our planet. 

Thank you for listening to me today.  Please just do your best — that’s all any of us can do, and that’s all any of us can expect — for us each individually and collectively to do our best. And I pray that our best shall be enough. 

Until next time , let me wish you a life filled with joy and hope, a heart filled with love and memories that bring you happiness, and a life of purpose where even if all you do is smile at someone in a day you will have lived part of your purpose. Until next time!