SCULPTURAL WASTE

Waste, it seems like the buying and tossing out of “stuff” is just a normal attribute of our species, or at least it has been since the industrial revolution stuck a plug into the pie hole of a simpler life. We have become a world of consumers, a grouping of bar-code soldiers, with one hand on a store shelf and the other one aiming for the waste basket. Be it short attention span or the overwhelming advertising stimuli, we just can’t ram enough stuff into our lives. Yes, some of us do gleefully skip down to the local salvation army, seemingly playing our part by “donating” our pass me downs to the less fortunate, but do we really understand the total scope of the circle of waste we play a part in. Clothing has a comfy little place at the top of the purchase pile and on average; an American family will spend $2292 a year on clothing. To put that into perspective, an average cost of a new graphic tee from your local Big Box Fashion Store will run you around $10-$25 bucks, and jeans at $29-$69…with 311 million people in America alone, that’s a big ass pile of clothes. This is just the clothes that are sold, the trail doesn’t end there.

In a idealistic world, we would only buy quality goods from local designers and understand that in the end, it is our decisions that determine whether land fills start to pile into our back yards, or that hundreds of thousands of pounds of “end of season clothing” is either discarded or shipped to other countries, only to be piled up in their back yards.

To put a bit of a rainbow on this slew of negativity, some creative minds have taken this concept, and tried to bring awareness to these issues through sculpture. They have taken piles of discarded clothing, and displayed pieces of beauty. If not for anything else, they help to draw our attention away from the cookie cutter regularity of the individual items and to focus on a bigger picture, whatever that happens to be for each participant. Each of the artist show below (in order of appearance, Naoko Yoshimoto, Derick Melander, Jarod Charzewski, Tamara Kostianovsky, , Guerra de la Paz (Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz), have all found their way to use clothing as a medium to express there point of view.

Naoko Yoshimoto

Derick Melander

"Clothing has this natural connection to the people who wore it,” ..... “I’m making artwork that’s like a collective portrait... it’s a symbolic gesture where I’m compressing the space between people.”

items in his work are stacked so they are easily taken apart and reusable.

“I’m eco-conscious as a person,” ..... “It’s part of who I am and naturally ends up having a place in my artwork as well.”......“It’s important that people understand the magnitude of the issue .... It’s important for people to see it.”

Jarod Charzewski

Tamara Kostianovsky

"For the creation of these works I cannibalized my clothes: I used the various fabrics and textures to conjure flesh, bone gristle and slabs of fat in life-size sculptures of livestock carcasses. The material connects our bodies with the ones in the work, bringing violent acts into a familiar realm. My intention is to confront the viewers with the real and grotesque nature of violence, offering a context for reflecting about the vulnerability of our physical existences, brutality, poverty, consumption, and the voracious needs of the body."

Guerra de la Paz

(Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz)

THE RHINO IN THE ROOM

"The Animal Chair collection constitutes a diverse range of species, from mammals to reptiles, and even including insects. Each creation retains the animal's natural vitality whilst being totally biological accurate in their appearance. This collection is homage to these animals and the whole animal kingdom which inhabits our planet, as an attempt to reflect and capture the beauty of nature in each living thing"

Maximo-Riera
http://www.maximoriera.com/


Each pieces is formed through the use of CNC (computer numerical control) and using the artist which rendered into 3D CADs , fed into the computer, then cut out of foam blocks, sanded and painted by hand to create the exact vision of the artists actual drawings with scientific precision and life like realize.

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" The main reason I chose to create a chair is because it is a everyday object something taken as a common and banal in our lives. Whilst considering the chairs base functionality, I also wanted to bring it alive, make it more present and create a stronger link between spectator, the piece and the surrounding space."

Maximo Riera

THE SKIN WE WEAR

We all share common traits as humans, but none more visible then what covers our entire body, SKIN. It serves as an element of our beauty, an indicator of our past, a obsession of our vanity, but most of all a shield to our body. Although it is essential to our survival, over time we have adopted second skins to layer upon our body's, only to serve the same purpose our own skin serves but at a heighted degree. To name the most obvious, Animal skins have been used since man has stood upright, and as we are all aware, are widely used to this day. Technology has allowed us to recreate these animal skins to cut down on cost of production and as a positive byproduct, lessen the amount of animals killed and environmental damage in processing. With this being said, alternative materials such as artificial leather, faux fur, pleather, moleskin, Koskin (used in HP computer bags), ultrasuede, poromerics, all come from synthetic materials such as polyester and polyurethane and generally don’t give a lot back to the environment.

Thankfully, due to the fast moving popularity of sustainability and eco awareness, positive alternatives to our second skins are slowly trickling onto the market. One such advancement, although not at new idea, is cork. Although or first thought might go to the porous board you pin your bills onto or the plug at the end of your wine bottle, cork has been used in the clothing trade for some time and is now finding a new use as an alternative to leather.

Durable, natural(ecologically sound), biodegradable, and of course 100% cruelty free, Cork Leather textiles have more benefits then most people may think. As for texture, it feels like no other material on the market, soft to the touch but with the firmness of leather (since it is wood). Stable, its wear resistance is due to its chemical and physical structure and is close to immune to micro-organisms. Considering its low surface dust absorption level, its hypoallergenic, and with proper surface coatings, dust, dirt and grease repellent properties as well.

The best element about this material is that it is truly sustainable. The cork oak tree is not required to be cut down as only the bark is peeled off and the tree is allowed to regenerate. “The cork oak is a slow growing tree that can live from 170 t0 250 years, which enables the stripping and harvesting of the cork to occur 16 times during its lifetime on average. The harvesting cycle typically occurs every 9-12 years, but only occurs once the tree is allowed to mature from sapling to an age of approximately 25-30 years, at which time the trunk has at least a circumference of 70 cm.” (http://sustainablematerials.com/cork/).

So many companies are realizing the sustainable material movement is not just a passing faze( as with the organic food market) and are tapping into the potential of this market. As with organic food, the sustainable fabrics market has started off pricy (cork fabric starting off at $169 yrd), but with time and investment in the advancement of technology with materials, prices will even out.

http://naturesleather.com/