Art From Trash

The weather was fairly reasonable for July today, so we went to the National Zoo.  The zoo is a great place for both animal and people watching, but today I was also interested in seeing an exhibit of sculptures made from trash that had been found in the ocean,

The sculptures were even better than I had hoped--huge sculptures of different marine animals.  The attention to detail was amazing, with the trash having been meticulously sorted by color, and then small pieces individually attached to the piece with screws and pieces of wire.  I work on a fairly small scale when I make jewelry, and I cannot imagine planning such large pieces.  When the medium is trash collected from the ocean, the process seems even more daunting.

Here are the pieces we saw.  Some of them have the additional design element of strangers' kids who were drawn to them.  I figured given the sizable crowds at the zoo, it was either that or no pictures at all for me.

It's easy to see some of the individual pieces of trash on this one.

This one might be the best example of trash-sorting by color.

I love the pieces of rubber as feathers!

It may be hard to see in the picture, but they used bottle caps for the suction cups on the octopus tentacles!