Tess Felix, a Bay Area artist, wrote me recently about work she has been doing with plastic beach debris. Felix said she first got the idea after a huge storm in February, 2010:
[It] washed tons of plastic garbage out of the Sacramento Delta and flooded the shores of Stinson Beach completely with colorful fragments of plastic. Shocking was the sight. The beach looked like a mosaic. I picked up some garbage that day, went home and made a portrait out of the plastic. I returned the portrait to a little shack on the beach as a gift back to the sea. Someone found it and took it home, so I made another one. This is how the plastic debris portraits came to be.
Fortunately, while the garbaged beach reminded me that we consumers are destroying our environment, I also saw shapes, color, and a potential to create something positive. I wanted to give order and meaning to it.”
“The new medium was exciting to work with. It reflects my passion as a painter. I continue to roam the beach picking up bits and pieces of plastic to clean, sort by color and turn into portraits.”
Here are a few examples of her work and I’ll be posting more in the “Plastic Art” section of the website.
