Plastic Water Bottles as Art

| Tue Nov. 10, 2009 2:46 PM PST
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Turns out plastic bottles—like the ones Fiji Water comes in—are good for something after all: art. Earlier this year, environmental activist David de Rothschild set sail with a crew of six to steer a boat made entirely of used plastic bottles around the world. Meanwhile, back in the US, artist Ellen Driscoll constructed a miniature landscape made entirely of 2,600 #2 plastic bottles. According to Driscoll, the project, titled "FastForwardFossil: Part 2" is "a ghostly translucent visual fugue in which a nineteenth century trestle bridge plays host to an eighteenth century water-powered mill which spills a twenty-first century flood from its structure." The exhibit closed this week at the Smack Mellon Gallery in Brooklyn, but photos are online here. And click through to see more below the jump.

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Ben Buchwalter is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter.

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Comments

Art for Water

13,699 is another amazing art installation that is created entirely from plastic water bottle caps. Christine Destrempes is a Maine artist who built this exhibit by stringing together 13,699 bottle caps and hanging them in elegant strings from a metal frame. Absolutely stunning. And, of course, the number 13,699 is significant: it's roughly the amount of people who die each day because of water related illnesses.

Check out pictures and meet Christine here: http://changents.com/christine-destrempes

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