Compost and bottle caps, when recycling doesn’t exist- make art:

Trash exists everywhere. One of my first memories is of the smell…burning rubbish smogging the sky and my nasal passages. A week’s worth of burning plastic bags, organic material, paper, food, and all manner of other things was enough to convince me to reduce my waste. However, you find that as you live here longer, the smell is customary, and the sight of trash in astonishing places no longer surprises (as shameful as that is to admit). We are however fortunate. There is a private (that is right, any removal of trash is privatized…a lucrative business I would think but no one has jumped on just yet) rubbish collection service that passes by our wall on Tuesday mornings to remove the trash that we produce.

Recently through a deep-cleaning effort we disposed of years of paperwork, trash, and miscellaneous items with the hopes of starting off the new year in a spirit of tidiness, efficiency, and above all else clarity.

On the other half of the compound…our home, there is trash produced at a rapid rapid rate. Between the 5 of us (lena, mike spiak, marissa, max, and myself) we produce a lot of trash. We all love to cook, be creative with our meals, and often find that our over ambitious spirits lead us to over purchase on vegetables, leaving us with a vast supply of peels, rinds, egg shells, rotten tomatoes, and potatoes sprouting foreign objects. All these factors contributed to the birth of recyclable art and recyclable earth.

Project ideas sprung up. The first to be put into action was the digging of a hole. A hole that is now home to a hot bed (literally all the organic material produces heat as it rots) of compost, insects, and the occasional plastic bag. Turned over once or twice a week the rains and the numerous leaves that fall from the trees overhead consolidate into fertile earth that is making out mango, papaya, and avocado tree smile. Next step is to interwork that compost into a tomato, cabbage, and flower garden.

Project number two began a while ago with a collection of bottle caps. This is an ongoing affair with collection. Bottle caps drunk are cared for and will serve as a memento of the 2010-2011 intern class in Zambia. The idea is to hammer out the bottle caps and screw them into a wood table. They will assemble to form Africa. Mosi caps (the local Zambian brew) will facilitate the construction of ZAMBIA!!!

Project three was a spontaneous exercise in nostalgia. Growing up fall was always the time to seek out the most colorful leaves, place them between 2 pieces of wax paper, and iron them together…natural stained glass. I did much of the same process only I attempted to make shapes, in the form of animals, out of vegetation. A giraffe and an elephant were what transpired, and for a first attempt I am pleased.

Constantly finding amusements to work both sides of the brain and in some respects, the earth.