“Balls 18″ x 36” by Judith Selby Lang. Made from plastic objects gathered from Bay Area beaches.
The Surfrider Foundation and Busvan on Clement are teaming up for a special art exhibition entitled “Message in a Bottle”.
The art and education event focuses on the plastic pollutants in our oceans. Located at 248 Clement in an annex of the Busvan building, the pop-up exhibition will feature a live, plastic mural art installation, beach plastic crafts, and artwork by local artists and students.
The gallery opens this Friday, January 22 with a reception from 6pm to 9pm, featuring live music from Jeff Desira, the art of local artists including Jonathan Anzalone, Patrick Kouse, Ariel Gold, Judith Selby Lang, and more.
At the opening reception, attendees can help the project complete a mural made of plastic objects picked up from our local beaches. Local ocean-friendly crafts will also be for sale along with most of the art displayed.
On Sunday, January 24, the gallery will host a family open house from 10am until 1pm. It’s a free day of ocean education, crafts, music and fun and to view the student art in the gallery space.
Private showings of the gallery are also available by appointment from January 23rd through 31st. Contact rap@sf.surfrider.org.
Want to help keep our beaches clean? Join a Surfrider Beach Cleanup event on Saturday, January 30 at Baker Beach from 10am until 12pm.
Sarah B.
Looks like a great event and cause and nice that local artists get a chance to display their work. It’d be good if somehow Busvan could extend this exhibit for a while and maybe even snag a couple of pieces from http://washedashore.org/events/ to include. I saw some of their pieces in Bandon, Oregon last year and they were pretty amazing.
I have been down to the beach several times in the past weeks. There is a more than usual amount of small plastic bits, and especially plastic bottle caps.
We always get more stuff on the beach after the rains wash it all into the ocean, but this volume is excessive.
I suspect this flotsam was destined for overseas recycling and was in one of the containers that spilled outside the gate last month.
It is especially troubling to me, that the contents of those lost containers was classified as proprietary.
One other thing.
I still regularly pick up monofilament fishing line (and sometimes hooks) that appears to have been casually discarded by OB fishermen. It would be wonderful if someone in Fish and Game would emphasize not littering such lethal trash with reckless abandon.
And the last time I did an ocean clean-up, which I’d still do again, I came across a shocking amount of menstrual waste (all types: pad, tampon, dirty, clean, wrapper, product, etc) and DIAPERS. It never even occurred to me that people would do such things on a beach, let alone dispose of them so improperly. And of course plenty of them are made of plastic or parts that don’t biodegrade (easily).
Although I am aware of the arguments on energy costs of paper bags and glass bottles…
When I was young we never had any issues with plastic junk floating around in the water. Paper bags just disintegrated after a couple of rains. Glass did cut and person on occasion at the beach, but sea creatures got harmed and in time the pounding sea ground the glass back into sand.
I wonder what a truly complete benefit-cost cradle to grave analysis of plastic vs. paper-glass would show. I suspect, I do not know, that the up front energy costs of paper and glass would get wiped out by the environmental degradation done by plastic on the back end.
I should not write so early in the AM 🙂
In my post there should have been a “…but NO sea creatures got harmed…”
HI:
The CA State parks Division of Boating and Waterways and the CA Coastal Commission has a program to recycle fishing line in our state: http://www.dbw.parks.ca.gov/Environmental/CleanGreen/TrashDebris.aspx#MONOFILAMENT. We need a local contact so we can work on this issue in Ocean Beach. We would love to partner with Surfrider Foundation on this effort
If you are looking for ways to reduce the amount of plastic in your life, I highly recommend http://myplasticfreelife.com/