Sunday, January 13, 2008

Awareness of Litter

My friends and I were longboarding underneath the Clearwater Bridge when I got stopped short by some old rusty wire sitting in the middle of the road. It probably fell out of a truck from the construction site next to us, or someone just threw it over the fence. Either way, my wheels got caught up, and anyone who skateboards knows that feeling just plain sucks.

Anyway, I picked up the wire and started bending it into a couple faces. I didn't want to throw it down on the ground again, that'd be re-littering, so I took it home.
The next morning on the way to some early skimboarding, I stopped under the bridge again and decided I wanted to put up my wire faces. I eventually found some old fishing line bundled and caught up on a pier, so I climbed down to snag the trash away from the water.
After a cutting couple clips of line, I headed up to the top of the bridge to hang my wire faces. As I started to tie the first knot, an older power-walker lady approached me. She was really excited about what I was doing, asked if I sold my art, and offered to buy the sculptures on the spot.
As she reached towards her fanny-pack for a wallet, I told her I'd rather just hang them, but I really appreciate the offer. "Oh I'll just take them when you leave, then!" she said. I knew she was joking, because later in the afternoon they were still hanging a good 15 feet above the popular exercise trail.
I went back exactly a week later to see if they were still up, and it turns out someone clipped them! My fishing-line knots were still on the poles, but someone stole the faces.

Someone also painted a new and extremely messy stencil of half-closed eyes on ground level. Did the X-Acto knife challenged stencil kid cut my faces down? Did a grumpy senior citizen "do their part"? Did someone take 'em home as souvenirs?
Haha, I could care less what happened to the faces. I brought awareness to the litter that is polluting our beaches by making it semi-attractive to catch more attention than if the objects were just sitting tangled on the coastline. When my wire art was stolen, it was no longer litter, and no longer a small environmental blemish that is all too often ignored. Keep our beaches clean!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're sweet.

"re-littering"

You hippy, you.

I'm glad you're doing your part.

-Brooke Davis

Unknown said...

haha sick