August 2, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I really love making trash art. I’m coming up to a year anniversary of Dr. Plastic Picker and there are many new identities I’ve tried on. I’m definitely a blogger now with over 270 blogpost. I’m an environmental activist. I’m a litter-picker and ocean beach cleaner. I’m an occassional plogger (picking up trash and jogging). I’m an Instagrammer with almost now 1100 followers. I didn’t even know what Instagram was before all this. I’m still a Pediatrician, HMO Middle Manager and mother. But the role that has been most delightful is that I’m a trash artist. I really like making trash art.

I have set certain rules for myself. I can only use new glue stick and that is it. Everything else I use has to be “Trash.” The tools I use to break up the plastic are all items I found on my litter picking walks or plogging beach runs. I have a set of heavy pliers I found once that are great for breaking up heavy pieces of trash. I have scissors I found once that I use to cut paper and flimsy plastic. Even the “frames” and backdrops I use have to be discarded or soon to be discarded things. Right now I’m partial to iPHONE or iPAD boxes because I like the newness of the white. But I’m really liking the old CD cases because plastic sticks well to plastic and the pieces are very sturdy when they are done.

When I make the trash art, I’m driven to do it. I can’t explain it. I set up a trash art table in the game room, and it’s the first time I ever really created for myself a place just for me. Sometimes our daughter will sit and do some of her art work there which is okay, but the space is really mine. It feels good. I intermittently go there and break apart pieces of plastic when I get into the mood, or will piece some bit parts together. I only work on pieces if I feel the drive to do it. When I finish a piece, I look back at it and I’m honestly kind of taken aback. There are so many layers of meaning to the pieces when I’m doing them when my mind is flowing freely.

Last night I was watching Star Trek Enterprise again, and making the above trash art piece which I’ve entitled “Ocean Plastic Dinosaur Fossil on a CD Case, Mixed media beach plastic and electronic waste, drplasticpicker August 2020.” It’s an interesting piece. Most of it is an old pair of sunglasses I found on the beach. I kept it and washed it, because the gray striped pattern was interesting. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it. And then I started just breaking up the partially broken plastic sunglasses. I had bits of pieces of the printer I’m still breaking apart as well. I was able to break up the sunglasses carefully enough that the lens stayed intact. And then it just flowed and looked like the body of a turtle. I think about turtles a lot. The head was a part of the old printer that looked like a reptilian head, and I began fishing out bits of the sunglassses from my box of plastic pieces and they looked like legs. The best part is the hinges of the sunglasses are interconnected to make a segmented tail. You can play around with the hinges and flip them side to side, almost like a toy. You can also look at yourself in the reflection of the sunglass lens, which is kind of surreal.

This trash art piece is actually really pretty, and looks better and more striking in real life. I am going to keep it for now. I’ll bring it into work to show my friends. I’m sure Dr. Dear Friend will like it, and Dr. MM who is an artist herself. It will for sure distract Dr. AF from the hard times he is going through right now.

It’s almost 6AM, and I want to get to the beach this morning to try to see if I can find more broken sunglasses. I think I could make lots of interesting Ocean Plastic Dinosaurs!

Below was Vaping Aliens. I really liked that piece too, but one of my pediatrician friends really liked it so I gave it to him https://drplasticpicker.com/vaping-aliens-vaping-flavors-hooks-adults-kids-and-aliens-an-open-letter-to-my-community/. Art even Trash Art should be shared. The whole point is that it is art, but it is also advocacy – reminding everyone how wasteful our lives are.