Description of Work

Rock Debris - 2021 - Screenprint - $300

Yard Waste - 2021 - Screenprint - $300

Soil Pollution - 2021 - Screenprint - $300

Leaf - 2021 - Screenprint - $300

Artist's Statement

Trash has become a pervasive part of nature. Litter is everywhere we look – in public parks, on the beach, and along the side of roads. It has even been documented in places that are remote and difficult for people to reach. ‘Unseen Trash’ is a series of works the comments on the ubiquitous nature of litter.

Daily, people pass by and ignore litter for various reasons: they are too busy, it is unsanitary, or they simply do not care. Due to the proliferation of trash in our environment, we have become desensitized to the litter surrounding us, often turning a blind eye to it. The intention of my work is to bring awareness to the abundance of liter in our everyday lives. The trash in the prints is meant to be harder to see, as though they are blending into their environment and are now a part of the natural world. The trash in these prints are representations of some of the litter that I have cleaned up and documented around my neighborhood. Picking up trash has been disheartening, within a few days of cleaning up a street new trash appears, it is as though I never picked it up to begin with. This has also made me wonder where does this trash come from, and where does it disappear to if no one picks it up?

My medium of choice for this series is printmaking for how to process calls to mind ideas of commercial mass production, which is relevant to our consumeristic culture which contributes to producing this waste and litter. I use the CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) bitmapping process to further allude to mass production, as it is typically used for color images in high volume publications. Together, the bitmapped colored dots blend to create a man-made or machine-like picture that mimics a natural image.  

Link to Artist's Website

If you wish to purchase any of these pieces, please contact the gallery director, Jacqueline Nathan (jnathan@bgsu.edu.)