Plastic Water Bottles as Art

| Tue Nov. 10, 2009 3:46 PM PST
plastic-exhbit-house.JPG

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.

Advertisement

Advertisement

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

Get Mother Jones by Email - Free. Like what you're reading? Get the best of MoJo three times a week.

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

Post new comment

Alternately, you may login to or register an account
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <ul> <ol> <li> <blockquote>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

MoJo Comments: Send Us Your Feedback

We changed our spam software to better filter comments. Should you encounter any issues, please let us know.

Photo Essays

The chaos and humanity of war.
What becomes of Janesville, Wisconsin, now that GM's left town?
The other side of Gitmo.
American Holidays