Eating Plastic

Eating Plastic represents a dining room in which a manikin couple and their baby sit at a table eating plastic food. Their clothing is made from plastic fruit nets. Their food and the decorative collages on the walls are all made from plastic food containers. It is a colorful statement about a serious health problem.

The intention is to raise consciousness about the dangers of plastic food containers, not only for life in the ocean, but also for humans. Warmed plastic leaches into food and drinks and becomes part of our bodies. Plastic in the ocean is causing the death of birds and other sea life.

How You Can Spread the Word and Save the World

Visitors to the exhibition at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes can pick up free postcards to mail to stores and manufacturers to encourage them to use biodegradable packaging. The installation is both a caution and a confession about consumer choices. I have been using discarded materials for consciousness raising exhibitions for over 50 years. I was an Artist in Residence at Recology San Francisco, and the de Young Museum.

Help Save the World…Send a Postcard

Below is the copy for the free postcard to help spread the word. Feel free to copy this and give it to stores, mail it to manufacturers and give it to friends for their use in raising consciousness. If we stop buying toxic things and purchase things in biodegradable packaging, the message will eventually get through, just as it has been with plastic bags. Meanwhile enjoy your food in safe packaging and see how much better it tastes.

GREETINGS:

I like your product ________________________________

But your packaging is toxic: harmful to humans and wildlife.

Please redesign your packaging to be environmentally friendly.

Meanwhile,I will be looking for similar products

with safer packaging, such as cardboard and paper.

_______________________________________________

A THOUGHTFUL CONSUMER