My art uses plastic recovered from beaches around the world to understand how our consumer society is transforming the ocean – the Conversation

‘Bounty Pilfered’ (center), ‘Newer Laocoön’ (left) and ‘Threnody’ (right). All made of ocean plastic from the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, installed at the Baker Museum in Naples, Fla., 2022 (by Pam Longobardi, CC BY-ND via the Converstion).

“I am obsessed with plastic objects. I harvest them from the ocean for the stories they hold…Each object has the potential to be a message from the sea – a poem, a cipher, a metaphor, a warning. My work collecting and photographing ocean plastic and turning it into art began with an epiphany in 2005, on a far-flung beach at the southern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii…